Ecommerce 3.0 is “Creator Commerce”

This week I was in Dallas for a creator conference. No, not VidSummit. I was at LTKCon. But this recap isn’t for the fashion girlies — it’s about the emerging approach to ecommerce and how creators are going to be the face of those efforts, wherever people are buying.?

? 1-SECOND SUMMARY

• Takeaways from inside LTKCon’s creator commerce conference?
• TikTok and Meta are considering ad-free subscription plans?
• Instagram tests different audience lists for your Stories
• Paris Hilton will lead livestream shopping efforts on X (Twitter)
• X (Twitter) has stripped headlines and context from links you share
• MrBeast and Tom Hanks deepfake ads are floating around social??

?? ROADMAP

Platform updates you need to know about as a marketer or creator

?? TikTok Updates

• TikTok is testing an ad-free monthly subscription plan, according to code spotted in the app by tech website Android Authority. The company later confirmed to TechCrunch that it’s testing the paid version in an English-speaking market outside the US. The ads skipped would be ads served by TikTok and not branded campaigns posted by creators.????

?? Meta Updates

• Instagram is testing the ability to share Stories to multiple audience lists — beyond Close Friends to multiple small groups.
• Meta is expanding the beta test of its AI-powered features for ad creation in Ads Manager with a global rollout expected by next year. The new tools are Background Generation, Image Expansion, and Text Variations.
• Europeans may soon have to pay for an ad-free Instagram or Facebook experience if they opt out of ad targeting. Meta’s floating a $14 monthly subscription plan proposal to regulators.It may just be a coincidence that news of paid versions of Instagram and TikTok surfaced on the same week but it does feel like we’ve turned a corner on social media. What was once a communal experience to connect and share with others is falling apart — no thanks to the platforms themselves.?This? “great Internet splintering” is leading to a patchwork solution of public and private spaces, wrote Insider’s Shubham Agarwal in an excellent piece on the future of social media. Instead of a digital campfire or town square, the future of social is looking more and more like a network of platforms that offers everyone a customized experience.

?? X (Twitter) ?Updates

• Livestream commerce is coming to X led by Paris Hilton and her media company 11:11. The platform and the personality announced a partnership Monday, saying Hilton will create and star in shoppable videos. She’ll also serve as a launch partner for new X consumer products, services and feature releases.
• X is removing article headlines on links shared to the platform. Posts will be stripped of context, only displaying an image with a website watermark. I’ve spotted several brands adding more detailed captions or adding “link: [url]” since the cue to click through is no longer obvious.?

?? YouTube Updates

• YouTube has eased up on rules limiting creators monetization on content discussing topics such as abortion and adult sexual abuse.?

?? Canva Updates

• Canva launched Magic Studio, a suite of AI-powered design tools. The latest AI features to help generate and edit assets include Magic Switch (resize), Magic Grab (separate photo elements), Magic Expand (expand images), Magic Morph (effects), and Magic Animate (motion).

?? Extras

• Amazon is shutting down Amp, its live-audio app. There’s a good chance you weren’t using it anyway, but it seems to be one more nail in the coffin for stand-alone audio experiences?
• The Leap debuted an AI tool that allows creators to build and sell digital courses, guides and tutorials in minutes
• Teachable is now offering creator subscription Memberships to offer?exclusive monthly content

Takeaways from Inside LTKCon

From the future of ecommerce to the social trends creators are talking about, here are my takeaways from LTKCon.?

LTKCon is one of the most popular creator affiliate conferences you may never have heard of. It’s an annual, invite-only influencer conference for the creator commerce platform’s top earners — bringing together creators who convert, brands who want to work with them and a platform that’s hosted $4 billion in consumer purchases in the last 12 months.??

As the affiliate space heats up — Amazon, YouTube and TikTok are just some vying for a piece of this pie — LTK opened its conference up to the press (The Business of Fashion, Fortune, Forbes and The Publish Press were all there this year); it added an online component to its awards show so people could watch along at home; and the company used the opportunity to share a slew of platform updates that affirm their status as a credible competitor in the creator commerce space.

But affiliates can still be a mystery to some creators: “There isn't a ton of overlap between an LTK creator and a YouTuber,” said Chloe Wen, who seems to be one of the exceptions with her channel By Chloe Wen. “ I've wanted to comment on huge YouTubers videos that are not using affiliate links... I only have 140,000 subscribers. I'm not giant, but I've monetized it so strategically through affiliates, that I'm able to make a great living off of it.”?

? LTK Updates

In between networking sessions, guest speakers like Dear Media’s Michael Bosstick and The Skinny Confidential’s Lauryn Bosstick, and Western themed-parties paying homage to the conference’s Dallas backdrop, several major updates to the LTK app were announced:??

• LTK Marketplace: A creator marketplace to connect creators and brands on partnership opportunities.?
• Comments: Creators and shoppers will now be able to ?leave comments on shoppable posts.
• Buy Now: Users can shop seamlessly through Creator storefronts versus clicking through to retailers.?
• Storytelling Posts: A new carousel content format with up to 10 photos in one post.

?? Amber Venz Box on The Future of Ecommerce?

With a renewed focus on content, curation and community and the update to facilitate in-app conversation, it seem to put LTK closer in line with a social network than simply a shopping tool. But LTK co-founder Amber Venz Box insists the company is still, at its core, an ecommerce platform.

“We know that in ecommerce 3.0 it's taking the best of commerce and it’s taking the best of social and then combining that to be Creator Commerce.”

ICYMI: Is “shoppertainment” the way forward for ecommerce??

Amber Venz Box: I think that DNA is a really important piece of the success. You've seen Meta launch Shopping, and then close Shopping. And that's because it is innately at odds with being an advertisement platform. If people go to you, it's a happy circumstance if they find a product that they like but it's not why they're there. It's not why they open the app for six hours, which, by the way, bravo for having an app that’s open for six hours a day! But the business is advertising and the business is eyeballs. It is very difficult to take something that is intended to entertain and turn it into a shopping destination.”

ICYMI: Is that part of the challenge TikTok Shop faces in the shift from entertainment to commerce?

AVB: “It seems to me that the model that this newest platform [TikTok Shop] is releasing, they intend to own the manufacturing through the fulfillment. So they are seemingly uncoupling themselves from the need to have third-party advertisers because their monetization will be through competing with an Amazon and less competing with a Meta. My hot take.”

ICYMI: What was your reaction to the X announcement that Paris Hilton will create and host live shopping videos??

AVB: “She's definitely a unique character. And so having a consolidation of maybe her efforts and energy or information would be interesting there. I think, again, they've tried shopping in the past and pulled it down. But I think he [Elon]’s trying lots of things to see what sticks.”

ICYMI: Will LTK try livestreaming?

AVB: “It’s definitely not off the table. It always comes down to what the consumers want. Maybe two years ago, a lot of our brands really wanted livestream. We did some private partnerships and enabled that for them. And they're not talking about it anymore… We really believe that this culture likes asynchronous consumption.”

ICYMI: So, how much will entertainment be a focus for LTK moving forward??

AVB: “I think of it more as, it's gaining trust in storytelling, but we wouldn't launch a feature that would be for pure entertainment. We aren't an entertainment platform. You should never be opening it [the app] because you want to be entertained, you should open it because you care about that person and that person is your shopping guide.”

? Creator Buzz?

I asked some of the conference’s tastemakers for their thoughts on the emerging themes and trends that were dominating this year’s creator conversations:

“I've heard less about TikTok this year. Honestly, I've heard more about Facebook this year, which I was not prepared for. But apparently a lot of people are having success with Facebook. I love that creators all do something very different and you can learn so much. Last year I learned about a girl who made most of her affiliates on her blog, and I was like, ‘Whoa, blogs are still a thing?’ And then one who did all newsletter, I do mostly YouTube, then you’re going to meet someone who does a lot of Facebook, someone who's on Pinterest.”?

- Chloe Wen?

“Gen Z is such a fun generation where they're really saying, ‘I don't care what's cool, this is cool to me.’ And they're making their own rules. And I think that's part of bringing Pinterest back. Most of us heard it a lot in 2013 and 2014 but, boy, is it having a resurgence. People are really loving it and it's that kind of mood board platform that Gen Z is really digging right now.”

- Anabeth Fuller

“I'm seeing a lot more cross pollination between TikTok and Instagram. Before I felt like they were two different worlds and two different audiences. But there's a lot more synergy between the two and you're seeing those trends travel a lot faster than they have before which is nice because then you're not having to explain the context of it. TikTok always felt like an inside joke. Now, I feel like Instagram has finally caught up where it's favoring those trends.”?

- Bonnie Wyrick

“There's a really big transition for a lot of us creators where it's more about the quality versus the quantity. I feel like that we're all kind of having conversations about that because you're not going to have every video get views. And so we're all in this transition of putting out really good content. Less of it. But really good content.”

- Taryn Hicks

?? WORTH READING

A round-up of the most interesting tech and trend headlines of the week?

• MrBeast, Tom Hanks, Gayle King warn of online deepfake ads -The Washington Post
• Instagram Looks for Ways to Revive Interest in Threads -The Information (paywall)
• Top Twitch streamers call on company to fix a? hack that lets users rack up fake views and defraud advertisers -Fortune
• Instagram is still crucial for influencer marketing, even as TikTok is on the rise -Insider Intelligence
• Top 5 game-changing influencer campaigns -AdAge
• The earliest content creators were mommy bloggers -NPR
• MrBeast is putting his snack brand’s logo on NBA jerseys -The Verge

Thanks for reading!