Author of TikTok Boom Chris Stokel-Walker tells the story behind the explosion of the first Chinese app to have a global audience.

He discusses the strategy behind TikTok’s growth and why its success could signal a shift away from a narrative long-dominated by Silicon Valley.

In this episode, Chis also unpacks TikTok’s role in geopolitical disputes, and tackles questions surrounding surveillance and censorship.

Rupa Shah, the founder of consultancy Hashtag Ad, discusses best practices for disclosing sponsored content on social media.

In this episode, she talks about how to assess whether a disclosure is sufficient, accountability in greenwashing campaigns, and the harmonization of regulations across borders.

Rupa founded Hashtag Ad after working at the UK's ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) for 13 years. You can find out more about Rupa’s work at https://www.hashtagad.co.uk/

Sources:

Federal Trade Commission. 2021. Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers. [online] Available at: [Accessed 15 September 2021].

Advertising Standards Authority, 2021. Influencers' guide to making clear that ads are ads. [online]. Available at: [Accessed 15 September 2021].

The EU Data Protection Supervisor Wojciech Wiewiórowski has been a vocal critic of surveillance-based ad targeting and has called for a ban on it altogether.

In this episode, he discusses the ethics of behavioural tracking in marketing, and sheds light on a new package of EU proposals that are being brought to the table to regulate the digital space.

Sources

“The Digital Services Act package,” European Commission - European Commission, April 26, 2021. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-services-act-package

“The Digital Markets Act: Ensuring Fair and Open Digital Markets,” European Commission - European Commission, April 15, 2021. https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en.

If you go to Google and type ‘Amazon’ you’ll probably see a result labelled ‘paid’. It was these kinds of ads - known as paid search ads -that economist Steve Tadelis grew suspicious of after he was hired by eBay in 2012.

During his time there, an external consulting firm claimed that paid searches for the keyword eBay on Google received the highest return on investment. However Steve couldn’t make sense of it. In order to see the ad, someone was typing eBay - so where else were they going?

Along with Thomas Blake and Chris Nosko, Steve conducted a controlled experiment which halted the paid search ads for three months. The results showed no measurable impact to eBay’s sales.

“The chief financial officer who owns the pockets of the company realised - wait a minute, we may be putting, you know, bundles of money on trucks sending over to our so called advertisers and those trucks are coming back pretty empty.”

The findings ruffled some feathers among the external consultants who Steve says encourage data to be treated “more like religion than science”.

He likens it to medicine. “300 years ago, they would say well, take a feather from a young chick, and mix it with a leaf of asparagus and put it under your pillow for three nights and you should get better. Thankfully, medicine has evolved a long way since then. But the consumers of the medical advice are still pretty much clueless about medicine. The same thing happens with data science and analytics.”

Steve is now at Berkeley, where he teaches business leaders the fundamental aspects of data science and business analytics.

“It's really to give people enough confidence to be able to ask questions, and then know that if the answers are unclear, it's not your problem. It's the people who're answering you who don't know how to deliver a good answer. “

Creator economy oracle Rodolphe Ködderitzsch predicts that 100 million people will become full-time professional creators in the next ten years.

In conversation with Natalie, he discusses how the role of creators have changed since his work at YouTube in 2011, the importance of creator decommodification, and how the future of the creator economy is much bigger than people understand today.

Rodolphe is currently the CRO of Pico, an operating system for creator businesses.

Sources:

Davidson, A., 2020. The Passion Economy. London: Vintage Books

Long Now Foundation. (2020). The Creator Economy | Paul Saffo. [Online Video]. 22 April 2020. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGQe9oaHXfI&t=182s. [Accessed: 27 April 2021].

Lorenz, T., 2021. The Real Difference Between Creators and Influencers. The Atlantic, [Online]. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/05/how-creators-became-influencers/590725/ [Accessed 27 April 2021].

Sara from gaming developer FunPlus started working in creator marketing back when most TikTokers were still in diapers. ⁠
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She’s been partnering with creators for 7 years (which may as well be in dog years by industry standards), witnessing its boom and shifts in trends.⁠
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With our host Natalie, she talks about using gut feelings when picking creators, tips for test campaigns, and tells us some funny anecdotes about working with creators over the years.⁠
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In this episode, Natalie talks about the differences between creators and influencers with Senior Brand Marketing Manager Adon Lawley from language app Busuu.

Adon discusses the pitfalls of working with influencers, the importance of authenticity, and how creator marketing is like ‘betting on horses’.

The CEO of Matchmade Jiri Kupiainen talks about the death of influencer marketing, how the creative ecosystem fuels more predictable campaigns, data privacy and the ethics of cancel culture.

The Creator Marketing Podcast is a monthly series covering the latest on the new creator economy.

Each episode Natalie Turner talks with industry experts about hot topics in creator-focused business and tech. Together they tackle the practical, ethical and even philosophical questions posed by the ever-evolving industry.

Influencers shilling products for brands is a thing of the past. Not only can we see all through it, but it’s simply not effective as a marketing strategy. Creators are not human billboards but artists who develop high-quality content as a form of self-expression. They can support themselves by allowing advertisers access to their audience.

The podcast is brought to you by Matchmade - the only platform providing fair, relevant and easy sponsorships for content creators, as well as scalable and predictable content marketing for brands.