The eMarketer team deliberated extensively to select the 10 key digital trends to watch in 2021 from a list of 43. Which trends narrowly missed the cut? Here’s our first in a series of additional transformative developments that ought to be on your radar in the year ahead.

eMarketer principal analysts Mark Dolliver, Nicole Perrin and Debra Aho Williamson at Insider Intelligence discuss what a new executive order could mean for user-generated content. They then talk about why The Wall Street Journal is doing well, publisher expectations for Q2 and Facebook's latest TikTok-like music making app Collab.

One area of potential risk where marketers won’t show as much concern is in user-generated content. During the pandemic, many brands enlisted fans and influencers to help develop marketing creative. What started out as a workaround when normal production processes weren’t possible will become a more regular occurrence.

After a tumultuous year, the social platforms will close 2020 on a high note in terms of ad revenues and users—and with features that closely resemble each other.

Meanwhile, the largest social platforms, built on user-generated content, operate largely unchecked by these mechanisms. The vast majority of digital budgets go to walled gardens because they deliver performance at scale and provide accessible self-serve buying and measurement capabilities at any budget.

In his two years in the role, Dunkin' Brands’ CMO Tony Weisman has led the company through a rebrand, updating Dunkin’s image to reflect its growing beverage priorities; expanded brand partnerships, working with companies that may not seem obvious for a business focused on drinks and donuts; and become laser-focused on user-generated content (UGC).

“Premium content publishers in the media have put a lot of pressure on brands over the past few years by highlighting the divisive nature of a lot of user-generated content, which is now driving advertisers to reconsider their spending on social media and perhaps redirect some of that spending into premium channels including programmatic connected TV ads,” said eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence

The fact that social media is largely made up of user-generated content (UGC), which can be unpredictable, only further breeds this lack of trust. For example, 87% of study respondents agree with the statement, “there is too much fake news on social media,” while 82% say that “ads on social media are very manipulative.”.

Expect more focus on supporting legitimate/vetted streamers vs. user-generated content. Facebook’s moves to allow businesses to charge for viewing live streams puts a revenue-driving spin on the practice. For marketers looking to get involved, the less polished their live stream, the better. The pandemic has been a proving ground for low-fi, low-res entertainment.

TikTok is likely hoping to avoid the many issues that come with running ads alongside user-generated content, though at the moment, there aren’t more details about whether brands can build inclusion or exclusion lists. Snapchat emphasizes its curated Discover content as a way to advertise in a brand-safe environment.

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.

Instead, it showed empty streets and user-generated content, a growing ad trend across many industries partly because it’s cheap and easy to produce. Meanwhile, Las Vegas, which began to open some casinos in the first week of June, focused on empathy by putting its customers first in its “When you’re ready, we’ll be ready” campaign.

Having to work with lower creative and production quality will result in new creative ad formats that involve influencer media, user-generated content and partner co-branding, Anthony of Merkle said. There will be stronger emphasis on social listening. Keeping abreast of consumer sentiment, not only toward your brand but generally about how consumers are feeling, will remain critically important.

Video has been slower to move toward programmatic because of a lack of quality inventory, most of it being user-generated content. However, in recent months, broadcasters have shown willingness to move toward automation, and we expect that to increase the supply of premium inventory in the programmatic market. There’s still a lag, though.

It also used email marketing and user-generated content, as well as influencer partnerships and public relations managed by PR firm MSL. KitchenAid used social listening to “identify the most popular recipes, ingredients and genres of food people are making right now,” Cole of Digitas said.

Since its founding in 2005, reddit has been a bastion of freewheeling discussion about everything from climbing to curly hair to the city of Calgary—but also plenty of disturbing, profane and violent user-generated content. In 2019, it took several steps to curb its problematic content, which may have helped draw in new users.

In June 2019, more than 61% of female mobile phone users in the EU-5 searched for user-generated content on social media before buying cosmetics digitally, according to Photoslurp and Zinklar. In France and Italy, that share was over 73%. There’s no question that momentum is building for social commerce.

And while short-form video provides marketers an effective channel to engage users, there are also concerns about brand safety, given the nature of user-generated content (UGC). Factors expected to influence programmatic video investment in the next 12 to 24 months include:. Striving for efficiency in a fragmented market.

“When it comes to performance, Smartly.io is seeing considerably better results from ads specifically created for the stories format, as well as ones that utilize user-generated content as part of a campaign,” said Robert Rothschild, vice president of global marketing at the company.

“We have also partnered with TikTok to reach out to the new-age audience through a challenge underpinning user-generated content. So far, the challenge has clocked in over 4.1 billion views on the platform,” said Flipkart’s group chief executive, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, in an article in The Economic Times. Grubhub.