Brief:

• Twitter announced at VidCon a new creative team for brands producing video content specifically for the social platform. The effort, called Twitter "ArtHouse," offers digital strategy, video creation and editing, influencer and artist management and event livestreaming, according to an announcement shared with Mobile Marketer.
• The platform and GroupM found that video content optimized for Twitter drives 33% more emotional engagement than non-optimized spots, while a Magna/IPG Media Lab sponsored study found that users spend 24% more time with Creator ads.
• Doubling efforts in the Creator space has led to a three-times jump in brand's visual campaigns on Twitter in the past six months, per the press release.

  Insight:

  Efforts for Twitter-optimized video are part of a broader strategy to draw advertisers to the social platform while cozying up to content creators.

  Twitter has recently ramped up efforts to help brands with creator-first strategies. A Wendy's video campaign with influencer Demetrius Harmon took followers into a test kitchen where he created fan-fueled suggestions. A Google Brazil thread boosted by influencers highlighted five LGBTQ+ artists, while Bud Light's "Dive Bar" tour livestreamed a Post Malone concert in Nashville, according to Twitter's announcement. Twitter reports that branded creator posts like these lead to a 41% increase in purchase intent, per the Magna/IPG sponsored study.

  Twitter is not the only social giant to look toward better monetization of creator content in order to draw advertisers to the platform. Facebook unveiled its own strategy around Facebook Creative Day. New offerings include Stars, a tipping system where users can send creators payments during livestreams, and intimate subscriber groups, among other changes. Over the past year, the platform has rolled out updates to make creator content more interactive and ad-friendly. The social media giant gives creators options for Facebook Live gamification and last summer designed a Brand Collabs manager that aims to connect influencers with marketers looking to partner.

  Snapchat is competing for revenue and viewership with new "Creator Shows," first-person shows designed around original creators like Emma Chamberlain. While Snapchat hasn't publicly revealed viewership statistics, it reports that daily time watching these types of videos has tripled in the last year.

  Meanwhile, Instagram has tested special accounts for influencers, which are exclusive to users with over 10,000 followers and connected to a Facebook business page. The growth tools are a particularly attractive offering, providing data insights like daily "follow" and "unfollow" data, which could also be an asset for brands looking to partner with creators.

  However, recent data show that the saturation of influencers' sponsored posts could be driving down engagement, as consumers may be growing fatigued by branded influencer content. Engagement rates for this type of content on Instagram are hovering at an all-time low, per a recent study from analytics firm InfluencerDB, as the number of sponsored posts on the platform have surged 150% this year.