As feeds become entertainment hubs, marketers rethink social’s role

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As feeds become entertainment hubs, marketers rethink social’s role

A quick scroll through social media video feeds would likely surface a slew of new programming types — a branded sitcom or game show, creator storytelling and ad-supported microdramas.

Social media platforms used to be digital town squares, opening up interaction between brands and shoppers. Now, platforms function more as short-form entertainment hubs.

The quiet shift is forcing brand marketers to rethink the role social plays in their marketing strategies, how creative gets made and success metrics. In some ways, brands are having to act like media companies, adapting by producing platform-native entertainment while still staying accountable to sales. 

“Brands have always gone where the eyeballs are,” said Uri Weingarten, evp of digital and social at Mod Op. Weingarten compared this trend to the shift from broadcast television to streaming. “It’s like that on a hyper-personalized scale.”

The challenge of platform-native content

Some brands have been hacking the system. Clipping, or turning long-form videos and streams into short, viral snippets, has become a go-to tactic for some to scale content across platforms.

Smoothie King is building “hundreds of assets” to fulfill the requirements of every single social channel, Claudia Schaefer, CMO of Smoothie King, told Digiday.

“Within one channel, one social channel, you have four or five different versions that are competing for the attention and then the algorithms help identify which one is doing the best work for you,” Schaefer said.

Health-Ade drink brand has shifted its media spend on TikTok, increasingly handing storytelling off to creators and user-generated content, said Sandra Heidrich, vp of marketing at Health-Ade. Heidrich did not specify how much the brand spends on TikTok.

The rise of vertical video seems to be rewarding entertainment programming over traditional ads as of late — at least that’s as far as Fernando Silva, vp of marketing for Cesar and Sheba in the U.S., is concerned.

“We are embracing the mindset that people don’t want to be served advertising. They want to be entertained, and they want to see content that is relevant and that matters to them,” he said. This year, social video ad spend is set to outpace CTV in terms of growth rate, as reported by Digiday and according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

Redefining success

Social media investment is a mix of performance and brand awareness for Mars-owned petcare brands Cesar and Sheba, Silva said. Brand health metrics like brand perception, relevance and sentiment play a bigger role than they have historically, he added.

Mod Op, which has worked with brands like Sparkling Ice, Verizon and Planet Fitness, has shifted its success metrics for social campaigns in response to social — measuring cultural resonance instead of followers, impressions and views, Weingarten told Digiday.

The vertical video trend is accelerating

Don’t expect things to slow down anytime soon. How much time people spend on social networks is creeping up, eMarketer reports. Active users are expected to top two hours per day this year. Last month, Netflix launched a vertical video feed in its new mobile app. Back in January, Disney+ made a similar move. 

Seeing the writing on the wall, Gap hired former Paramount executive Pam Kaufman as executive vice president, chief entertainment officer in January. The newly created role aims to help Gap build and scale its entertainment, content and licensing platform across various entertainment verticals. 

Hanna Samad, svp and group director of connection strategy at agency RPA, puts it like this:

“The nut that we’re all trying to crack right now is: what does it look [like] to build emotional connection with a brand in a feed environment,” she said.

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