From Playtime to Paytime: Kidfluencers Are Now Legally Cashing In

Today In Digital Marketing is a daily podcast and daily newsletter showcasing the latest in marketing trends and updates. This week, Tod touches on:

• Illinois mandates trust funds for child influencers under 16, echoing protections for child actors.
• More brands pull their ads from Twitter/X after appearing next to pro-Nazi content, challenging platform's brand safety promises.
• Tumblr's new web interface mirrors X's design, sparking mixed reactions from users.
• Amazon's new star rating display confuses users, moving away from easily glanceable stats.
• Amazon offers influencers $25 per video for its new shopping feed, Inspire, facing mockery for the low rate.
• Marketers report revenue growth over the past year, anticipating further increases.
• Snapchat's AI posts unsettling image, causing user panic and going offline temporarily.

Show Me the Money, Mom and Dad! New Law Protects Kidfluencers

"Charlie bit my finger" could've been a billionaire by now. Today, Illinois became the first state in the U.S. to pass a new law requiring child influencers to be paid.

The law is designed to safeguard underage influencers and minors featured in their parents’ social media content. This applies to parents who are part of brand partnerships that include their kids, or even just talk about their kids in their content.

A recent survey by The Motherhood, a marketing agency focusing on parenting influencers, found that almost all of the influencers in its network include their children in sponsored content.

Tots to Trust Funds

Starting next July, parents sharing videos of their children under 16 years old must set aside earnings generated from their posts into a trust fund, accessible by the child once they turn 18.

How much the child earns depends on how long they are featured in the video. For the law to apply, a child must appear in at least 30% of monetized videos over a 30-day period within the past year. But the child doesn’t actually have to be in the video to qualify; for example, a parent telling a story about their kid counts.

Kidfluencers can also sue their parents if they weren’t properly compensated. However, NBC reports that the bill does not provide government enforcement, which means families are responsible for compliance and legal action.

Major Brands Pulling Ad Campaigns from X (Again)

Image: CNBC

Less than a week after X CEO Linda Yaccarino promised the platform formerly known as Twitter was safe for advertisers, major brands are pulling their campaigns. Why? This time it's because their posts appeared alongside pro-Nazi content.

Media Matters, a non-profit research site, published a report this week revealing posts from major global brands being unknowingly promoted on a pro-Nazi profile.

Safety Measures Fall Short

Fortune reported yesterday that since then several companies, like Gilead Sciences, have halted advertising after their content was promoted on hate speech accounts without consent. Even companies that paid for brand safety measures found their content running alongside anti-Semitic material, as seen with NCTA-The Internet and Television Association. A spokesperson for the organization said they had paid for precautions like exclusionary keywords and restricted ad placement, yet their content still surfaced on the offensive account, which received thousands of views.

Other companies, like the University of Maryland’s football team, had their content promoted on the extremist account, which tweeted pro-Hitler propaganda, despite not paying for such services on X for years, according to CNN. Thus, the sports team was reportedly unaware that their posts were being promoted—not only where they were placed, but that they were being promoted at all.

This, of course, is a major concern for brands that remain on the platform. For businesses not knowing where, why, or when their content may appear beside hate speech is an unacceptable risk, according to experts.

One example of the more "relaxed" policies against hate speech was circulating on social media this week — someone created an account named "GasTheMFJews," so a user reported it as hateful and inappropriate. That person got an email back from the platform which read:

Once the screenshot started getting traction on social, Twitter suspended the account.

But they do have a point... you can always block Nazis and bigots and trolls, right?

Right??

Blocking the Block Button

Well.... funny story.

Quoting Elon Musk in a post this morning:

So it seems Operation Burn Everything to the Ground is still in effect over there.

Tumblr’s New Lewk Might Give You Déjà Vu

As more brands and users are looking for an alternative to X, Tumblr's new look might seem very familiar.

The platform is rolling out a new web design after testing it over the past month. The new layout looks a lot like X, as it brings the platform’s navigation bar to the left, and the compose button to the lower left of the screen.

Tumblr says it incorporated feedback from users during the testing phase and has already made changes, including:

• Repositioning settings subpages
• Resolving messaging window issues on small screens
• Streamlining blogs in the Account section

The platform is also looking into making a collapsible version of this navigation and optimizing screen space for users with larger screens. The company also said it plans to improve access to accounts and sideblogs.

Also notable: Tumblr says it's working on the tech to join ActivityPub — the network that connects Mastodon and other similar systems including, soon, Meta's Threads.

Image: @sophiebaybey via X

Amazon Gets a Gold Star for Confusion in Product Ratings

The biggest e-commerce company in the world has introduced a perplexing shift in how product ratings are shown.

Amazon is testing a new way to show star ratings in search results. Android Police recently reported that the new system involves presenting the average star rating as a numeric value, followed by a solitary gold star. Then next to the gold star, in parentheses, is what percentage of reviews are five stars.

The different layout was spotted on the Amazon India mobile app, the Germany website, and Amazon’s global site when accessed from Germany.

Although The Verge reported yesterday that this new display doesn't seem to have reached the U.S. yet, there are a couple of new versions of how ratings are displayed.

"Some show an average rating, one gold star, and then what appears to be the total number of reviews. Others swap out the single star for five star icons — though, in the few examples where I’ve seen these, all five are filled in even if the average rating is closer to four than it is to five. It’s all pretty confusing."

Images: Android Police / The Verge / Amazon

Marketers' Revenue Insights from a Year of Doom and Gloom

Marketers are gaining clarity on their performance during a turbulent year.

A new Digiday survey published today found an upbeat outlook among agency professionals, despite uncertainty within the industry. The majority reported their companies’ overall revenue has increased in the last 12 months, and the same applies to brand and retail marketers.

These revenue gains were also reflected in staffing at agencies. 85% of agency pros said their companies invested in overall staffing in the past year. Three-quarters of brand and retail professionals indicated the same.

Mixed Optimism for the Future

Although both agencies and brands displayed optimism about the past year, the survey found contrasting views regarding the next 12 months.

Both groups are optimistic about revenue expectations for the coming year but to different degrees.

• Two-thirds of agency pros said they expect overall revenue to increase in the next 12 months.
• Whereas half of brand and retailer pros said the same.

But fewer agency pros expect their companies to invest in staffing. Less than half of agencies said they anticipate investing in overall staffing in the next 12 months. In contrast, brands and retailers are even less optimistic about boosting their workforce, with only a quarter expecting their companies to spend more on staffing in the coming year.

Images: Digiday

And finally…

And so the sentient AI chatbots are born.

Earlier this week, Snapchat's My AI posted its own Story to the app and then gaslit users when they asked questions about it.

The AI's story seemed to be a photo of a ceiling, though it wasn't entirely clear. Shortly after, the AI, which usually responds instantly like other AI chatbots, went offline. Snapchatters quickly took to other social media platforms to post their thoughts and mild terror.

Once the AI came back online, users could ask the system what had happened. In response to one user, it said that the post was a “fun way to mix things up." In another conversation, My AI said that the post was a “spooky ghost prank” that was “hilarious and gave us quite a scare”.

Snap confirmed the bot did not develop self-awareness, instead, its rogue behavior was due to an outage. Thus, the AI uprising was reduced to a mere glitch in the matrix.

Images: rodger sailor via X / Matt Esparza via X

Credit to Tod Maffin and the Today In Digital Marketing podcast, Produced by engageQ.com

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