Once relegated to the children’s market, virtual characters are entering the mainstream in China. Fictional as these digitally rendered avatars may be, they hold real jobs, from pop star to influencer, to even news anchor. And they’re becoming increasingly interactive and humanlike, thanks to improvements in technologies such as AI, motion capture, and virtual reality (VR). Recent advancements in augmented reality (AR), in particular, have enabled virtual avatars to step out of social media and make live appearances alongside flesh-and-blood celebrities.

While TikTok's popularity was picking up well before COVID-19, individuals secluded in their homes have been in search of new forms of entertainment, causing TikTok's US unique vistor count to rise 48.3% between January and March.

The news: The number of marketing job listings related to creators has surged 4,645 times since 2018, peaking at 92,900 positions earlier this year—and Amazon was the single largest job poster, with 40 active roles as of May 2021, according to Thinknum data cited by The Information. That beats out social media companies like Facebook, ByteDance, and Google, which all cracked the top 10.

Meanwhile, many tech workers looking to change jobs are seeking more flexibility around remote work per Fast Company. Twitter closed its San Francisco and New York offices due to the current surge. The company announced Wednesday that they are pausing future office reopenings after considering CDC guidelines.

With the $70 million raise, the insurtech will further gamify the industry, and a recent uptick in online searches for life insurance and a need for better employee benefits can increase growth.

But the expansion of the creator economy is gradually making “creator” as a job title more feasible, as the new monetization options are opening the door for many up-and-coming creators to get their businesses off the ground and grow their channel.

There are a lot of influencers who just take a check; they don't necessarily do a great job, and they're not committed to making it a mutually beneficial scenario. But when there is less restraint [from the client] and I can simply do what I have done to make my following [so high], it always does better.” —Sean O’Donnell, an Instagram creator focusing on fashion and photography.

In many cases, workers would rather quit than go back to the office: 39% of US adults said they would consider quitting their jobs if their employers weren’t flexible about remote work, according to a May Morning Consult/Bloomberg poll. In April 2021 alone, the Labor Department reported that a record 4 million US workers quit their jobs, per NPR.

Roku is apparently considering expanding into the smart home device market, according to a job listing viewed by Protocol. The since-removed listing reportedly sought applicants to help craft Roku’s “home technology product strategy” and develop the company’s product roadmap; it described the expansion into smart homes as necessary for Roku to remain competitive.

Creators find it difficult to do a good job when they don’t know the standard they’re expected to reach. “I just want to know what kind of metrics they’re looking for. Do they want a 50% engagement rate or something like that? Or are they looking for X amount of swipe-ups? Most of the time, we creators don't get much feedback.

More than eight in 10 consumers search for information online, and most of them conduct this activity on mobile devices as well as PCs. Many also now use even newer channels like visual and voice.

Employers are desperate to curb their shares of rising healthcare costs, and many are betting on virtual care to get the job done. 80% of employers think virtual care will play a bigger role in their health benefits in the future, per Mercer’s 2020 National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans.

Websites with cleanly designed, easily readable user interfaces, and straightforward and consistent architecture that offer multiple ways of finding content are rewarded by both search-engine bots and people using assistive technology.

Users can be targeted by demographic data such as their age, gender, geography, education, job experience, title, seniority, skills. Interest targeting peppers in behavioral data such as content liked and shared, hashtags clicked, search history and even intent data from Microsoft Bing and Bombora integrations.