Digital Media Predictions for 2023
Or: "Go Long on Shorts "
2022 was one of the most transformative years in internet history.
I know, I said the same thing in 2021. And 2020. And I probably would have said the same thing since we started getting free hours of AOL on CD-ROMs en masse. But 2022 was uniquely wild.
Just one year ago, the idea of Elon Musk being CEO of Twitter would have been considered a tech-bro fever dream. AI art felt like a wonky niche. Nobody knew what the heck a ‘BeReal’ was. And VCs plowed investment into NFT and crypto platforms as if no lessons were learned from the dot-com bust.
We knew there was a lot of scams in web3, but who would have thought Sam Bankman-Fried would be uttered in the same breath as Bernie Madoff?
I self-graded my 2022 predictions in a recent LinkedIn post and, to be honest, my soothsaying sucked.
I need to nail it this year.
So here are my informed-yet-wildly-speculative predictions for the year we at Phil Ranta Co. are calling ‘2023’.
And if you haven’t yet, please subscribe now with this button so I don’t have to bug you at the end of this post.
‘Super Fan’ Platforms Become a Must-Have for the Mid-Tier
So many digital markets that boomed in the pandemic imploded. Instacart’s valuation dropped 40% in 2022. Meta had their largest mass layoff so they can continue their metaverse kamikaze mission. Peloton bikes became clothes hangers.
And OnlyFans, which made $4.8b in 2021, grew by 31% in 2022.
OnlyFans wasn’t a pandemic trend. It was a creator economy shift.
Patreon gets a ton of credit for being the super fan platform of record for so long, but OnlyFans should have taught them one thing: super fans want to pay for a personalized experience, not just more para-social content. The power of OnlyFans are the direct messages.
A slew of similar products in both the NSFW and SFW markets will challenge OnlyFans in 2023. BrandArmy, Passes, FanFix, Playboy’s Centerfold, Slushy, and more each have a slightly different point of view with the same thesis: the biggest fans will pay to get closer to their favorite stars.
In 2023, a lot of really buzzy content will launch on these platforms, and nearly every mid-tier influencer will have one (think ‘link-in-bio’-style ubiquity). The highest tier will greatly ignore them to focus on their dominant platforms. Don’t expect MrBeast to join OnlyFans anytime soon, unlike Markiplier.
(Side note: I am the COO of We Are Verified who works directly with most companies listed, but I do this because I believe this prediction rather than predicting this as a way to de-risk my partnerships.)
AI Creation Tools Reach Ubiquity
Midjourney and Dall-E 2 were fun. But this year, mass adoption in AI belonged to Lensa and ChatGPT.
Lensa became #1 in the App Store when their lost cost AI avatars trended.
ChatGPT took one week to reach over 1 million users.
Now larger audiences are getting used to the capabilities of AI, so there will be launches in nearly every vertical using AI to source and display information and creative assets.
In 2023, AI art and chat bots will still reign supreme, but you’ll start to see more popular applications for B2B (writing real estate listings, creating optimized SEO, logistics, etc.) and, most annoying, as a way to address consumers for marketing.
You think spam is bad now? Just wait until the full e-mail marketing funnel including the images and copy are 100% automated!
This is bad for Google, as AI assistance will be the first real challenger to Google’s search. Why search ‘best hotel in Waikiki’ when I can just ask ChatGPT and get a direct, ad-free answer? And this happens at a time where SEO experts have made finding reliable information through Google almost impossible, instead surfacing endless scrolls of garbage text and ads (have you tried to Google a recipe lately?!)
Performance Marketing Goes Shoppable
Amazon already owns 14.6% of the digital ad market as Google and Facebook’s market share goes down, and this trend will continue. The social sites blame the pandemic while Amazon continues to soar.
Why?
Amazon owns the full funnel from search to sales. Google and Facebook earned a punch in the face with the downfall of third-party cookies and Apple allowing users to shut off ad personalization.
Now that data harvesting has gotten a little tougher (emphasis on ‘a little’ as many of us feel corporations still extract too much data for too little return), offerings like Amazon advertising to high-intent purchasers becomes more valuable. If I have a blender company, I want to show up near the top of Amazon search results when someone looks up ‘blender’.
This trend is amazing for influencer marketing, as it allows a more direct pitch to click on a link and purchase than most media sales, especially as ad targeting gets less specific.
And if China’s boom in live video shopping is any indication, there’s a huge opportunity for UGC live video shopping in the States, though companies will need to get the cost of product down to de-risk creator investment if they want mass adoption.
Twitter Monetizes Creators Far Better
Everyone’s favorite internet hero / villain Elon Musk has teased that he will offer creator monetization on Twitter not just for video, but also for text.
Anyone that reads my LinkedIn knows I’m not a believer in Elon’s godlike genius. The internet has a tendency to believe that if someone is successful in one field, they’re genuises in all fields. In the digital space that has been oft proven to be flat out wrong. Remember Quibi led the infallible Jeffery Katzenberg and the confoundingly fallible Meg Whitman? And Kanye (one of the three Musketeers Elon memed along with himself and Donald Trump) makes great music, but is too mentally unstable to be running any social media platform. Even Parler.
But with all of Twitter’s missteps in the past few months (I don’t believe there’s been any good steps) introducing some sort of adoptable pathway to monetization is smart.
Over half of Gen Z expects to make money from their social media account in 2023.
One in four Gen Zers plan to become a social media influencer as a job. Not ‘hope’. They ‘plan’.
Twitter’s biggest issue is the lack of a decent moat. It’s too easy to leave the platform unless you’re a brand, a politician, or a reporter. The post quality is low and it’s too easy for bots to create junk. And thanks to Elon, now they can be verified bots for just a few bucks per month!
Little known fact: video creators can already monetize on Twitter, but it isn’t marketed well and the revenue is low compared to other platforms. Much like Facebook video monetization, Twitter video monetization is the best kept secret that shouldn’t be a secret in social media, and plenty of Jellysmack-style agencies are starting to look to Twitter monetization as their next high-margin creator service.
If Twitter finds a way to quickly launch a simple revenue share based on post engagement, it should increase the quality of content, encourage great creators and publishers to stay on the platform, and bring back brands who will want to work alongside these enthusiastic creators.
And no, I don’t think Twitter will go bankrupt in 2023. But check back with me on that prediction around March.
LinkedIn Launches Content Stats API
Nothing like talking about LinkedIn to my LinkedIn audience in my newsletter mostly promoted on LinkedIn.
In 2022, LinkedIn scaled their ‘Top Voices’ program (thank you for the honor LinkedIn!), changed their verification system, launched a bunch of creator tools, and updated their analytics tools.
Next step will be launching an API to allow third-parties to analyze top performers on the platform.
This will encourage more media sales on the platform and bring ad dollars to top creators on the platform. And B2B ad dollars puts most B2C ad dollars to shame.
As I always tell creators when I talk about LinkedIn: you may get ten million views per YouTube video but many of your viewers are teenagers, spread across the globe, or background watching. I get 100,000 views per post with engaged readers and their top job position is Founder, their top city is New York City, and their top company is Amazon. I would argue my 100,000 views are worth the same as their 10 million in terms of advertiser value.
TikTok Does Not Get Banned in the US
With every passing day I’m more alone in this point of view, but here we are.
TikTok will not get banned in the US in 2023.
This is not saying it shouldn’t be banned in 2023. I’m saying it won’t.
I find the way Chinese governments, Chinese companies, and Oracle work together specifically problematic when it comes to how TikTok data is secured.
But there are two huge problems with a ban: everyone loves TikTok and most Americans don’t care if their TikTok data is shared with the Chinese government.
I’ve heard this sentiment specifically: “So what if they know I like dancing videos and make up tutorials?”
As we learned from Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, we should care a lot. But the vast majority of Americans will never understand the reasoning.
Any government official that pushes hard for a full ban is going to be public enemy #1 from so many groups. Not just those who care about internet freedom, but everyone under the age of 25.
TikTok bans will be relegated to government devices, so don’t expect Amy Klobuchar to nail the #WednesdayDance.
YouTube Shorts Tops 2 Billion Monthly Viewers
But TikTok doesn’t need to be banned to lose power. YouTube Shorts is going to continue growing like mad.
YouTube Shorts is getting 1.5b monthly users. TikTok has just over a billion.
The biggest complaint amongst top TikTok creators is difficulty monetizing. Even top TikTokers end up taking $1,000 ‘audio deals’ or need to move their audience to the aforementioned OnlyFans to make any ‘real money’.
We’ve seen this before with the downfall of Vine. The top Viners like Logan Paul and Amanda Cerny left the platform at the height of its popularity because they didn’t know how to make it a business. Where did they go? YouTube.
And YouTube announced that as of February 1, 2023, they will start monetizing Shorts.
If they get this right (I think they will) this will be huge for TikTok creators who were smart enough to build their YouTube Shorts audience. Even a $1 eCPM could result in top Shorts creators making over a million dollars per month. I’m not exaggerating. There are many Shorts creators doing over a billion monthly views.
TikTok can do the same thing, but YouTube has spent over a decade refining their video ad product and revenue sharing system with creators. TikTok won’t be able to get it right in time, and you’re going to see a lot of market share for creators, advertisers, and viewers remembering the glory of YouTube.
TikTok hasn’t even introduced a real system for rights management yet. Just look at all of the freebooting on that platform!
Expect YouTube to announce 2 billion monthly YouTube Shorts viewers by the end of 2023.
It’s Polygon’s Year to Shine in Web3
2022 was a mess for NFTs and crypto (unless your name is Donald Trump).
FTX went down. SBF is arrested. BTC is way down. ETH is way down.
It was a bad year for three letter acronyms in the web3 space.
But through it all, there was one blockchain who was quietly staying above the fray: Polygon.
While other chains were pumping and dumping, Polygon Studios led by former YouTube Gaming head Ryan Wyatt had an incredibly successful NFT launch with Reddit during a down market, had the buzziest brand beta launch in web3 with Starbucks Odyssey, and inked partnerships with Meta, Adobe, the NFL, Disney, Stripe, DraftKings, and a slew of gaming studios.
And it seems to come from the right point of view: focus on the experience and not the tokenomics.
By the end of 2023, industry insiders are going to be talking about Polygon Studios’ capabilities even if they’ve never seen the symbol $MATIC. And that should be the point of web3 (SHOULD be…).
Beyond 2023
Per usual, I have to cut myself off lest this becomes too long of an article to keep readers engaged. But make sure you also keep your eyes on Pinterest video, hologram advertising, creator-led company investments, OOH video, long-lead advertising campaigns for movies and TV shows, a return to the ‘authentic’ vlog style as a growth format for creators, and rising power in short video niches like financial creators, real estate creators, woodworkers, etc.
The recession is going to drag on, COVID will hang out in the background all year and come back in fits and starts, and M&A activity in the creator economy will happen with channels, studios, and creator-led companies (most will fail when the creator’s career ends due to the natural ‘fame cycle’).
More creators will seep into mainstream shows like Charlie D’Amelio on Dancing with the Stars or Logan Paul in WWE. More mainstream actors, stars, and IP will seep into social media like Wednesday and Rodrigo Mussi. Everything will continue its slow march of the digital media singularity: where content is just content and can no longer be bucketed into TV, movies, internet content, video games, and interactive experiences.
But since we’re not there yet, I’ll leave you with one piece of advice: if you’re a VC with a hundred million dollars, don’t give it to a 30 year old with no experience running a financial institution in a clearly inflated market then blame the move on market conditions.
Give it to me to build a YouTube Shorts production studio.
Author Phil Ranta is the Chief Operating Officer at the top influencer management and platform services company We Are Verified in Los Angeles, California. He has built some of the largest creator networks in the world at Facebook, Fullscreen, and Studio71 and has hundreds of millions of views on content he’s produced. He is the co-founder of comedy NFT project Own Every Word that has driven over $1.5m in sales in 2022 alone. He was also a longtime professional comedian and his toddlers think he’s hilarious (his wife not so much).
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