With Elon Musk’s current curiosity in Twitter, Fb’s development flattening, and TikTok’s meteoric rise, it feels just like the world of social media is again into some type of inflection level interval. Customers appear hungry to check out new platforms once more, and entrepreneurs are delivering. Final 12 months the Supernova app launched as a ‘moral various to instagram’. Now a brand new social media startup – WeAre8 – hopes to actually pay customers for his or her consideration, and is even going out for a crowdfunding round of equity investment to show it.
I might be as skeptical as anybody else that these startups wouldn’t have an opportunity towards the BigTech social platforms, had been it not for the truth that WeAre8 is the brainchild of a extremely skilled promoting business entrepreneur who understands the promoting mannequin of social media inside-out and thinks she has the solutions to sort out it.
Sue Fennessy emerged from Australia however took her promoting information startup to New York in 2009. Standard Media Index (SMI) has now turn into one of many staple of the promoting business, offering information on international media company expenditure information for all main media and product classes.
A few years in the past she turned incensed on the sum of money going into social media platforms like Fb, the place platforms prefer it had been getting used to unfold mis-and-dis-information about all the pieces from politics to the pandemic.
Fennessy informed me that SMI had tracked $250 billion of advert cash spent around the globe: “All of this cash was going to Google and Fb. And on a macro degree, I turned massively distressed as a result of we had been seeing journalism implode [We Are8 recently sponsored the ‘Byline’ journalism festival]. We noticed the misinformation concerning the local weather, and the pandemic, and but the common engagement charge on a digital advert on Fb is below 1%. So we thought, how can we have now $100 billion final 12 months – and a billion of that was from charities – paying Fb, and but such appalling promoting effectiveness for manufacturers.”
It was then that she determined {that a} mannequin the place customers had been paid for his or her consideration might need each good traction with customers in addition to the potential to draw ad-spend from manufacturers extra successfully. Thus WeAre8 was born as a brand new social media app to capitalise on this mannequin. On WeAre8, over 60% of all advert spend goes on to its customers and ‘impression’ oriented causes.
Fennessy says the genus of Fb was that they made it simple for anybody to purchase adverts, via Fb Advert Supervisor. So she plans to construct out an equally simple ad-buying back-end to WeAre8: “We’ve constructed our sustainable Advert Supervisor, which has now been deployed throughout the business so it makes it simple to purchase.”
Fennessy has now attracted institutional buyers to the platform, received a partnership with telco EE, and introduced in buyers together with the UK’s Channel 4 TV channel. It additionally has a number of massive expertise agreements / angel buyers, within the form of sports activities commentator Clare Balding, former footballer Rio Ferdinand, rugby union participant Ugo Monye’, Strictly’ dancer AJ Pritchard and Catch-22 actor Harrison Osterfield, amongst others.
On the app, WeAre8 app, customers watch an advert for two minutes a day and receives a commission for his or her time. The startup says this ‘democratizes’ digital promoting, and places placing individuals and the planet – not tech corporations – again into the enterprise mannequin for social media. Some 55% of the ad-spend on the platform is shared immediately with individuals and charities, with one other 5% going to a creator fund for ‘micro reveals’, collaborations, and month-to-month challenges on the platform’s important social feed, ‘8Stage’ which is, claims Fennessy, a “hate-free evolution of the social feed”.
Sue Fennessy, WeAre8
Certainly, Fennessy is sort of the ‘Che Guevara’ about this situation. “Now’s the time to unite towards the social media giants and reclaim our financial energy…. Social media is our framework for democracy and it needs to be owned by the individuals and worth them. WeAre8 has constructed this expertise,” she says.
Whether or not or not you agree together with her, she’s additionally discovered passionate supporters in her celeb buyers. As Balding says: “I’m very cautious about when and the way I take advantage of social media, so I’m actually enthusiastic about how optimistic WeAre8 is as a platform. I really like that there’s now a spot the place tens of millions of individuals can come and provides their time to make a small contribution, which collectively turns into an enormous fundraising initiative for varied charities.”
In addition to this new Crowdcube funding spherical, final month WeAre8 introduced its $15 million Sequence B funding from Channel 4 Ventures, the UK’s largest ‘media for fairness’ fund, and Centrestone Capital.
New buyers into the Sequence B spherical embrace UKTV Ventures, an funding fund by business broadcaster UKTV, whose mother or father firm is BBC Studios, which affords startups promoting in change for fairness, to the equal of $1.2 million in promoting airtime, that might be delivered over UKTV’s seven tv channels (Dave, W, Gold, Alibi, Drama, Yesterday, Eden). Its first TV promoting marketing campaign within the UK throughout Channel 4’s platform portfolio together with its streaming service All 4, and on UKTV channels in Could 2022.
Brendan Kilcawley, Head of Industrial UKTV Ventures, mentioned: “WeAre8 flips the script on the same old expertise/client dynamic and places the person expertise entrance and centre.”
However Fennessy isn’t simply speaking these points up only for kicks. WeAre8 can also be a licensed B Corp firm, which requires it to report on sustainability and moral values.
Assuming WeAre8 spends this cash properly, it has a shot at getting some customers on its platform, and even claims to be aiming for 80 million individuals on the app by the top of 2022.
However with a view to do this, it should get many extra US customers, and historical past reveals that celeb endorsement isn’t sufficient to win customers over. Paying individuals precise money cash could assist – however it’s going to even have to verify some enterprising hackers don’t find yourself gaming the system one way or the other…
