The travel influencer space, a fast-growing trend in recent years, has fallen flat in 2020. As the UK locked down and travel was brought to a halt, advertisers in the industry canceled their campaigns with popular Instagram accounts. Search, on the other hand, stands to fare slightly better than social this year, and this is likely thanks to pent-up demand.

“If an influencer is showing off a product that they like, particularly for the kid audience, the line is blurred when it comes to whether they’re legitimately interested in this thing vs. whether they’re selling it and they’re being paid for it,” Preston said.

If done correctly, this can dovetail with a B2B influencer strategy, as brands can have industry thought leaders with a large, relevant following join the broadcast to broaden reach. For B2Bs that sponsor other industry events, the shift might look a little different. Digital commerce platform provider Avionos, for instance, was a Gold sponsor of Adobe’s Summit.

“The breadth of influencers and content creators that we work with across Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok is incredible. We have parents, nature photographers, foodies and travelers. As TikTok goes beyond just lip syncing, and as people get more creative with the platform, you’re going to start to see a larger diversity of content and content creators.

Section 230 has encouraged the vast increase of user-generated content, including influencer content. A complete revocation of Section 230 would create huge potential user-generated content liabilities for some social media platforms, threatening the viability of their business models.

Another IBM product, IBM Watson Advertising Social Targeting with Influential, uses AI to identify influencers who align with a brand’s values and voice, which can potentially help drive engagement among a variety of groups.

The retail industry is transforming at both physical stores and in digital. This report examines 10 trends that will most shape retail in the year ahead.

Retail sales in France have taken a body blow during the coronavirus crisis, but digital retail is seeing gains. We expect retail ecommerce sales in France to total $77.27 billion (€69.01 billion) this year, compared with $66.00 billion (€58.94 billion) in 2019.