Future of TV Briefing: Why owned channels are key to creators’ commerce businesses

In recent years, creators have had to grapple with platform changes that have affected their abilities to drive people from their videos to purchase products. Apple’s App Tracking Transparency, for example, introduced one attribution roadblock for affiliate links directing people to an app instead of a website. Last year YouTube’s removal of external links from Shorts curtailed creators’ affiliate revenue options. And there’s always the potential for platforms to further clamp down on external links, especially as the likes of TikTok and YouTube stand up their own native affiliate commerce programs.

“Social platforms are becoming closed ecosystems, and it’s just a matter of how fast they can build and install their own ecosystems to essentially build a full-funnel experience with their platform. And this is going to affect affiliates,” said Johan Kristensson, managing director at talent management firm 500 MGMT.

To be clear, creators typically aren’t overwhelmingly dependent on affiliate links for their income. Brand campaigns often account for the biggest share of creators’ revenues, according to creator industry executives. But affiliate commerce is still often an important piece of the overall revenue pie.

“It’s not a priority, but it’s a great add-on. It’s great for their fan base, their audience base, to be able to get exactly what they want without guessing. It shows the power of [the creators’] selling as well,” said Saad Aslam, co-founder and partner at talent management firm Genflow Creators Agency.

The potential impact on creators’ affiliate businesses isn’t limited to what links can be shared on which platforms but can extend to what insights creators can have into those links’ performance. Increasingly, marketers are asking to evaluate the performance of creators’ affiliate links – such as their average click and conversion rates – when determining whether to hire creators for brand campaigns, according to creator industry executives. So maintaining an ability to access that information can be paramount.

To that end, it’s another reason for creators to be developing their own audience channels outside of any particular platform. Email newsletters are one option. But text messaging can be another.

As an example of how text messaging can bolster creators’ commerce businesses, take Alyssa McKay and her own clothing brand Beyond Lost. The creator who has made more than $1 million from Snapchat’s mid-roll ad program has signed up “tens of thousands” of people to her text messaging list, according to Brian Mandler, co-founder of The Network Effect, the talent management firm that represents McKay. 

More to the point, though, is the text messaging list’s down-funnel performance. Links shared to the messaging list have an 85% average clickthrough rate, and its returning customer rate is higher than 60%, according to The Network Effect’s other co-founder Brian Nelson.

“Our approach has been true social shopping: build a community on social and drive them into the shopping experience. It’s a little bit different than generally creating content and tagging products that may or may not work,” said Mandler.

What we’ve heard

“It does kind of put a floor under CPMs. You’re not going to be able to come in and execute at your bottom dollar.”

— Locality’s Mica Hansen on political advertisers’ impact on the CTV ad market

Numbers to know

50,000: Number of subscribers that YouTube TV is estimated to have gained in the second quarter of 2024.

1.62 million: Number of subscribers that pay-TV providers lost overall in Q2 2024.

25%: Percentage share of off-screen crew members working on BBC shows that need to be people who are ethnically diverse, disabled or have underrepresented socioeconomic backgrounds.

77.5%: Percentage share of voting interest that Larry Ellison’s Pinnacle Media will have following Skydance Media’s acquisition of Paramount Global.

32%: Percentage share of surveyed U.S. adults who said they want the government to ban TikTok.

What we’ve covered

How the elections are shaping influencer marketing, from brand strategies to social media spending:

• Three-quarters of surveyed people said they want election content from creators.
• At the same time, brands are tightening brand safety measures on social platforms.

Read more about election-related influencer marketing here.

The cases for and against investing in CTV during the presidential election cycle:

• Non-political advertisers are wary of their campaigns airing adjacent to political ads.
• Some streaming services, such as Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, have pledged not to air political ads.

Read more about election-related CTV advertising here.

What we’re reading

Battle of the Bobs:

There have been many chronicles of the saga of Disney’s failed CEO succession from Bob Iger to Bob Chapek, but this one from The New York Times may be the most comprehensive.

Netflix tries to cut its carbon footprint:

The streaming service has sought to lower the carbon emissions from its original productions, but it hasn’t had much to show for the effort so far, according to Bloomberg.

The Try Guys try streaming:

The standalone streaming service that the creator group launched earlier this year now generates 20% of The Try Guys’ total sales, according to CNBC.