At Meta’s NewFronts presentation in New York on Thursday, three creators, including social series Street Hearts host Tiff Baira, participated in an onstage game show hosted by comedian Roy Wood Jr.
The stunt was an apt representation of how Meta wants to position itself as a centralized hub for the creator economy. Advertisers continue to pour billions of dollars into the space, and other companies, including Snapchat and TikTok, also spent NewFronts week emphasizing the ways they can help facilitate work with creators on their platforms.
On Thursday, Meta didn’t just talk creators during the presentation; it also touted a handful of new live and video ad capabilities all aimed at continuing to keep advertisers interested.
Link in bio: On the creator side, Meta is testing a trends feed in Instagram’s Creator Marketplace, a feature that is designed to help advertisers identify trending topics on Instagram Reels with links to examples of Reels that fall under the trend, so they can see the types of content and topics that are resonating with audiences. Meta’s also testing trending ads on Reels, which will also allow advertisers to show up against trending content.
“By discovering trends like ‘spring nails’ or ‘festival vibes,’ brands can get inspired to create culturally relevant Reels partnership ads for their next campaign,” Ricky Van Veen, Meta global creative strategy VP, said onstage.
Creators can also directly partner with brands on partnership ads as part of an update that will introduce a new ad format that centers creators by featuring one partner instead of two in the header. (Previously, both brand and partner had to be in the header.) Van Veen said onstage that adding creator content to partnership ads drops cost per action by 19% and increases brand lift by 71%.
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Meta is also starting to test a Creator Marketplace API that will “enable partner agencies and third-party developers to easily search for and vet creators,” Van Veen said.
Press play: Meta’s renewed emphasis on live content and video comes while the tech giant is jockeying for position in the creator economy. The company is bringing some advertising opportunities to Facebook Live, allowing brands to pay to boost livestreams from creators. Additionally, Facebook Reels is getting a video expansion tool that will work by “generating unseen pixels in each video frame to expand the aspect ratio,” creating “a more immersive and native experience,” according to the company.
The focus on video also extends to Threads, which now has over 350 million monthly active users; Meta, which just opened up ads on Threads to all global advertisers, will soon test video ads on the platform.
“We know advertisers want a more video-rich experience on all of our platforms, not just static images,” Simon Whitcombe, VP of Meta’s global business group, North America, said.
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