Today in Digital Marketing - Influencer Marketing Grows Up

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

Influencers are charging more — and it's partly your budget's fault. TikTok brings the update many wanted, but few actually need. And Apple takes on Google on one of the most important platforms on the web.Links to today's stories Rate and Review Us • Contact Us 📰 Get our free daily newsletter📈 Advertising: Reach Thousands of Marketing Decision-Makers🌍 Follow us on social media or contact usGO PREMIUM!Get these exclusive benefits when you upgrade:✅ Listen ad-free✅ Back catalog of 20+ marketing science interviews✅ Get the show earlier than the free version✅ “Skip to story” audio chapters✅ Member-only monthly livestreams with TodAnd a lot more! Check it out: todayindigital.com/premium✨ Premium tools: Update Credit Card • CancelMORE🆘 Need help with your social media? Check us out: engageQ digital📞 Need marketing advice? Leave us a voicemail and we’ll get an expert to help you free!🤝 Our SlackUPGRADE YOUR SKILLSGoogle Ads for Beginners with Jyll Saskin GalesInside Google Ads: Advanced with Jyll Saskin GalesFoxwell Slack Group and CoursesToday in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital on the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on Vancouver Island, Canada.Some links in these show notes may provide affiliate revenue to us.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It is Thursday, July 25th. Today, influencers are charging more. We have the reasons why. TikTok brings the update many wanted, but few actually need. And Apple takes on Google on one of the most important platforms on the web. I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead on this short summer edition of Today in Digital Marketing. There was a time when influencer marketing was relatively inexpensive. The industry was new, creators didn't have a lot of experience, and brands didn't commit much to the experimentation. A lot has changed in the last couple of years,

and Digiday today has a great piece up on their site documenting the rise in rates. Smaller influencers are asking for rates often double or triple what they charged in 2021. Specifically, two or three years ago, TikTok micro-influencers, that's those with 5,000 to 20,000 followers, earned about $1,000 to $3,000 per post. Today, one industry expert quoted in the piece say they charge between $3,000 and $5,000. So why the rise? Part of it is that advertisers now demand content usage rights and exclusivity. Influencers have learned they can charge a premium for this. Campaign tracking tools have gotten more reliable, and influencer agencies have sprung up to provide a middle layer,

a layer which extracts a slice of the revenue. There is some good news. Costs for influencers with 100,000 to 1 million followers remained relatively stable. Quoting the Digiday piece, quote, influencer marketing isn't new. However, its maturation was spurred by the pandemic lockdown as people spent more time online and influencers became a direct line to the audiences that brands were trying to reach. That said, there's yet to be standardization across the industry for influencer marketing

pay scales, even as influencers are pushing to standardize their pay, negotiating tighter contract terms, and implementing late fees. Even as costs go up, spending shows no sign of slowing. To offset rising, and largely ad hoc pricing in influencer marketing, advertisers are eyeing brand ambassador programs, locking in pricing via long-term contracts, gifting products in exchange for posting,

and repurposing influencer content across paid media, client socials, and more, unquote. Almost all of Google's enormous success in offering local advertising is their Maps product. Certainly the mobile app helps, but don't discount the traffic that comes in from the desktop version. It's substantial.

Perhaps that's why Apple has finally launched its Maps product on the web, a full 12 years after offering it on their mobile devices. It is in beta and you can find it at beta.maps.apple.com. It is not available in all regions. What does it mean for marketers? It means it's even more important that you update your business profile with Apple. Just like Google's business profile, Apple has one. It's called Apple Business Connect, and you can find it at businessconnect.apple.com. Additional features, including Lookaround, will be available in the coming months. Maps on the Web is currently available in English. It is compatible with

Safari and Chrome on Mac and iPad, as well as Chrome and Edge on Windows PCs. Support for additional languages, browsers, and platforms will be expanded over time. And finally, I told you it was short. It may be a small thing, but it's a big thing. TikTok is finally letting users upload custom thumbnail images for their videos. Until now, this is only available on desktop. Now it's coming to the mobile app. You'll find it on the same screen as where you drag your video to pick an existing thumbnail. Once this update gets to you, you will see a new upload button on the right to use. Reels, that's Instagram and Facebook's product, already lets you do this. And YouTube just added the ability to add text and filters to screenshots from your videos to

use as thumbnails. They say custom thumbnail uploads are on the way. That said, thumbnails really aren't as important on vertical short video platforms than, say, YouTube's main service. This is because videos are fed one after another without seeing the thumbnails. It only matters if people pick a video to watch from your account's profile page, which does happen, especially if people first find you through a video of yours that goes viral. There is actually one extra story that broke just at our deadline, but there's not a ton of information about it. Chat GPT has released Search GPT, their search product. This is similar to Perplexity.

It's actually what we all thought they were going to announce when they ended up announcing 4.0. Not a lot of information about it. It looks basically like a competitor to Perplexity. It is up, but only for a very small number of people. You can get on a wait list for it. Once it releases a bit more widely, we will have more coverage about it. All right, that's it for today. See you tomorrow.