Steven Borrelli, CEO and founder of Cuts, speaks with eMarketer vice president of business development Marissa Coslov about the D2C brand’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, including doubling down on ecommerce and social media marketing.

Not every marketer does influencer marketing, but a large majority do. In our first-ever forecast, we estimate that 67.9% of US marketers with 100 or more employees will use influencers for paid or unpaid brand partnerships in 2021.

When asked about their priorities for the year in SEMRush’s “State of Content Marketing” report, the most popular answer, with 79% of marketers agreeing, was generating quality leads.

The influencer marketing industry is changing, and the pandemic is propelling many of the major shifts in the market.

eMarketer principal analyst Mark Dolliver, junior analyst Blake Droesch and vice president of content studio at Insider Intelligence Paul Verna discuss how negative emotions are received in ads, whether we're witnessing the beginning of the end of the Upfronts, if paying with your hands is a good idea, the significance of LinkedIn Stories, if parents are actually influencers, what the Boston Celtics and Twitter have in common, and more.

eMarketer junior analyst Blake Droesch and principal analysts at Insider Intelligence Debra Aho Williamson, Mark Dolliver, and Jeremy Goldman discuss how social media might change as a result of the continued spread of misinformation on the platforms and general negative sentiment surrounding them. They then talk about the best way to use Stories, influencer ad disclosure, and which consumer group has increased its social media usage the most during the pandemic.

Story advertising is growing rapidly as more marketers make the format a regular part of their social media marketing. And thanks to improved creative tools, the ads can now look more like native organic story content, leading to better results.

While it’s too soon to bid adieu to the aspirational influencer, it’s clear that the pandemic has humbled many of even the most polished creators.

eMarketer junior analyst at Insider Intelligence Blake Droesch discusses the options that marketers have to utilize Instagram Stories through paid advertising and influencer partnerships. He also talks about measurement metrics that marketers can utilize to determine whether their Instagram Stories strategy is effective.

The pandemic is changing how brands work with influencers. Not only is it accelerating existing industry trends, it also presents new challenges and opportunities for influencer marketing.

The pandemic has disrupted the influencer marketing industry. But it’s not time to completely throw out the rulebook, as most of the changes are accelerations of pre-existing trends, rather than transformative shifts in the market.

Seventy-two percent of US and UK consumers who follow influencers said they were spending more time on social media since the outbreak.

Influencer marketing remains both fascinating and frustrating for marketers. In this report, 16 creators share how they work with brands and how they view their role in the path to purchase.

Research by Socialbakers, a social media marketing platform, found that Northern America ad spending on Facebook and Instagram fell by 31.6% in the first week of July compared with the previous week. (By Socialbakers’ definition, Northern America includes the US, Canada, and a handful of sparsely inhabited islands and territories.)