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Instagram to Rollout Influencer Revenue-Sharing Tools

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khal
@khaleelkazi
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5 min read

There's quite a lot of news about the big social media/web 2.0 sites at the moment. A lot of different topics are going around with all of the latest Trump/Twitter beef, protesting, Covid, etc.

One thing that has been a consistent conversation in the social media space is the monetization of the platforms. Many people have taken to creating a full-time job for themselves and building a life on these platforms. Instagram is probably the most prevalent among "social influencers" who make it their full-time gig to post their creative work and get paid by brands and even by building their own brands on the back of attention.

Since we're building the LeoFinance community (and the broader Hive community), taking lessons away from web 2.0 companies is a vital notch in the tool belt. The models that these companies use and have used in the past to grow their platform and eventually monetize it/entice people to stay are great case studies to follow.

If you compare Instagram's influencer space to something like a YouTube or Twitch, you see a lot of differences.

The main thing that is differentiated in these platforms is the means by which creators get paid. On platforms like YT and Twitch, influencers are paid by the platform themselves and some also do brand deals/build their own brand on top of that reliable stream of income they get on views.

"On YouTube, creators can run ads on videos and receive monthly payments from the platform. And on TikTok, livestreaming creators can earn thousands of dollars in digital gifts. Instagram influencers have consequently pursued audiences on other platforms where their revenue streams may be more stable."

YT and Twitch pay their influencers a portion of ad revenue when ads are played on videos/streams. There are also some donation features on these platforms.

Up until this point, IG has really only allowed influencers to monetize in third-party deals -- by being an influencer who deals directly with brands. IG doesn't get involved in that process and therefore, doesn't assist their influencers, provide them a steady stream of ad revenue or take a cut of the profits.

Obviously this is a major shortcoming - both for IG and for the influencers. It's a missed opportunity for capitalizing on attention on behalf of IG and it's a potential loss in steady ad revenue for influencers (ad revenue that might not be nearly as high as brand deals, but is steady and reliable for the most part).

Catching Up With the Rest of the Industry:

"The company announced several new features on Wednesday, including ads on IGTV videos, digital badges that fans can purchase through Instagram Live, merchandise sales through Instagram Shopping and an expansion of Brand Collabs Manager, which facilitates sponsored campaigns between companies and creators."

As we see more and more companies (both in the decentralized, crypto space and in the centralized, web 2.0 arena) add in layers of value for creators -- i.e. Brave browser paying creators with the BAT token or Hive paying creators with upvotes or now Reddit's integration of ERC20 tokenization, we will continue to see more creators opt to get in control of their finances and get money, get paid.

"Influencers are an asset to social platforms. They drive engagement, but platforms that hope to retain top creators must help them do one thing well: make money. Influencing is a career, after all, and if creators aren’t getting paid, they will eventually stop showing up for work."

Afterall, without influencers, these platforms are worthless. The influencers are what drive the eyeballs. They keep the audience in their proverbial seats and keep the scrolls coming in. Without them, there would be no economy.

This is one of the many reasons why the PoB concept has always fascinated me with Hive. We have this ability to reward users/creators in HIVE tokens (and if the content is about finance, we can reward them with LEO + HIVE). This is a new age, web 3.0 style economy where the majority of value flows to the users' and influencers' pockets rather than a centralized power structure.

I believe that in the process of transitioning to web 3.0, we're going to see the traditional media platforms like IG, Twitter, etc. integrate more and more features to revenue share with their influencers. Regardless, in the end we'll see web 3.0 platforms win the day but in the meantime the vast majority of attention will stay where it's at until web 3.0 is "dummy-proof" and ready for the average individual.

"With its new monetization features, Instagram hopes to convince creators that its platform can support their work both functionally and financially. Ads from brands including Sephora, Ikea, Puma and other test partners will begin appearing in IGTV videos next week, with 55 percent of the ad revenue going to the creator (a cut that’s comparable to YouTube)."

"The badges will appear as little hearts next to a user’s comments on a livestream and will cost 99 cents to $4.99. For now, creators will receive 100 percent of the money made from badges, though Instagram could roll out a revenue-sharing agreement after the test phase is over, likely in 2021."

Both as someone who creates content and as someone who's building a community around content creation, this interests me. I'm always going to keep an eye on what these platforms are doing because let's be honest here -- they didn't make billions of dollars by doing nothing right.

A Suite of Tools for Instagram.. A Suite of Tools for LEO

"'There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to monetization, so we’re focused on building a suite of tools that can support the different needs and ambitions of creators in the long term,' Mr. Osofsky wrote in an email."

The goal of the LeoFinance community is in building a portfolio of useful tools while cultivating a community around those tools. Hive is the best place to do that as there is already the best community you could hope for and there is so much flexibility in terms of tokenization and development.

While Instagram builds out their suite of tools to make web 2.0 more attractive (and ultimately, try to get influencers to stay), we'll take lessons from them and build a better suite of tools that make web 3.0 irresistible.

So to wrap a neat bow on this: IG and web 2.0 platforms will continue to try and compete with the web3 ideas of decentralized monetization and revenue sharing models but in the end, they'll never compete. They're just biding time until their eventual extinction.

The real value for these influencers lies in web3, they just don't realize it yet.

Speaking of a portfolio of tools, check out the ones we're building on LeoFinance:
- *Blog & Earn LEO + HIVE Rewards at https://leofinance.io - Trade Hive-Based Tokens on LeoDex at https://dex.leofinance.io - NEW: Track Your Hive Account Statistics at https://hivestats.io - NEW: Learn & Contribute to Our Growing Library of Crypto Educational Content at https://leopedia.io - Delegate Hive Power* to @leo.voter and earn a 16% APR paid daily in [LEO tokens](https://dex.leofinance.io)

 

Posted Using LeoFinance