Influencer marketing spending in the US is set to grow more than 30% this year and surpass a key milestone. According to our inaugural forecast on US influencer marketing spending, the category will exceed $3 billion in 2021 and will surpass $4 billion next year.

Creator economy crescendo: Amazon is quickly building out areas of its business that center on influencers, as the walls between social media and ecommerce erode and creators' roles in those spaces start to blend together.

Social commerce is rising rapidly worldwide. But to what extent can the US market mirror that of China, the world leader in social commerce?

Down to collab? A look at influencer income

When Blink Fitness had to temporarily close its doors at the height of the pandemic, the company quickly shifted its focus to where consumers were: online.

Many marketers had long underestimated the value of creators in their marketing mix. That’s no longer the case. Most brands today have incorporated influencer marketing into their media plans, and many intend to allocate even more funds to the tactic this year.

Creators now have more ways than ever to make a living online. This report explores how brands should approach and engage creators for partnerships in the new monetization ecosystem.

NewFronts recap: Exclusive content on ad-supported platforms, shoppable shows, and creator-driven video content on social media were three major trends we saw at the NewFronts this past week.

Affiliate commerce isn’t new for many publishers, nor is it for marketers. But more content publishers are entering the affiliate space, creating new opportunities for performance marketers to reach high-quality audiences through high-quality content. Meanwhile, the affiliate model itself is evolving. Some affiliate networks now offer marketers more ways to attribute sales to multiple publisher touchpoints along the path to purchase.

Here’s how publishers are developing and expanding their ecommerce monetization strategies, and how brands and retailers can partner with them to drive purchases in the affiliate channel.

Tipping comes to Clubhouse: The social audio app will now let users tip hosts, likely a play to keep creators on the platform as they’re in danger of being poached by bigger players like Twitter and Twitch.

Clubhouse has buzz, but social audio isn’t as simple as it looks. The most promising marketing use cases are for thought leadership, virtual events, and influencer marketing.

The major social platforms hit the ground running in 2021, making substantial investments into many of today’s top social trends: audio, influencers, and short video, to name a few.

For shoe retailer DSW, TikTok is a place to test, learn, and have fun. In this excerpt from our new report, "Marketing in the Short-Video Landscape," Maria Wollenburg, DSW’s manager of social media and content, shares what the company has done on the social platform and what was learned in the eight months since launching its first TikTok paid ad campaign.

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.

YouTube Shorts debuts in the US: The feature may just be another TikTok clone for now, but if YouTube can successfully harness its existing base of video content creators, it could set Shorts apart.

Despite how consumers feel about it, politics remains a core part of the social media experience. This report explores how marketers should navigate social in the aftermath of the 2020 US presidential election.

Livestreaming has become a prominent feature across the social media and digital video landscapes. Here’s how marketers are taking advantage of opportunities within the space.

eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Debra Aho Williamson discusses TikTok's future: Can it keep operating in the US? If so, what will user growth and engagement look like going forward? She then talks about marketers' attitudes toward influencer marketing, major social media trends of 2021, and the prospects of live shopping on social media in the US.

Internet memes are not a new phenomenon, but the events of 2020 have spurred their consumption. Despite their popularity among social media users, marketing with memes can still be a risky business for brands.