Student-Athletes Can Now Make Money For Sharing Their Game Highlights On Twitter

Hi there! Better late than never, right? Apologies for the slight delay. I was in Seattle for the last few days for a customer meeting and some sightseeing. Enjoy the read, and look out for the next edition on the usual Friday cadence.

Today’s Edition:

• Twitter & Opendorse allow student-athletes to monetize their personal game highlights

• TikTok & Ticketmaster’s new integration help users discover upcoming events and purchase tickets

• YouTubers can create Shorts from their existing long-form video uploads

Twitter & Opendorse Expand Their Partnership To Allow Pac-12 Football Players To Earn Money For Sharing Their Game Highlights

Twitter and athlete marketing platform, Opendorse, are expanding their partnership to empower student-athletes to monetize their personal game highlights for the first time through a new Twitter Highlights program.

How It Works

Powered by technology and media company Tempus Ex Machina, participating Pac-12 football players will receive a custom video of their game highlights after every game, including different angles of their best plays. They then share their highlights from their Twitter account, run pre-roll ads through Twitter Amplify and receive a portion of the ad revenue.

The program is currently limited to just Pac-12 football players but will soon be expanded to men’s and women’s basketball and other sports.

A Growing List Of Monetization Opportunities

The program comes just a month after the NIL era celebrated its first anniversary. Since legislation passed, student-athletes have monetized their influence on and off the field, from branded content deals to appearances to ownership of companies. Now, student-athletes add to that growing list of monetization opportunities by being able to be compensated for game highlights.

Why It Matters

Besides being a first of its kind, there are several reasons why this is notable. First, it enables football players across different profiles and positions to take advantage of their NIL. Every player has the opportunity to make money through their work on the field without having to be a high-profile or key position player.

Furthermore, unlike branded content or appearances, athletes aren't required to create new content or add something else to their schedule to make money. Instead, they can simply leverage Opendorse and Twitter to their ad-enabled game highlights. That’s a much lighter lift than shooting content or making an in-person appearance. Because athletes have busy schedules, time often prevents them from maximizing their NIL.

Lastly, it's just another example of a platform supporting ad-based, revenue-sharing monetization. Several platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat, have recently launched or expanded revenue-sharing experiences.

What It Means

More creative ways for student-athletes to monetize will emerge as the NIL landscape matures. While many will look toward the traditional influencer marketing industry as inspiration for expanding monetization options, the traditional influencer marketing industry can learn much from NIL's innovation. Many athletes, brands, and platforms are still experimenting with how they partner. They are looking beyond the standard branded content deals because NIL is still very new, and the playbooks are being developed in real time.

LinkedIn Starts Rolling Out Clickable Links To Assist Creators In Driving Traffic To External Landing Pages

LinkedIn has started rolling out Clickable Links, a feature that allows creators to add clickable links to images and videos. Creators can access the feature by tapping a new chain link icon during the image or video editing process. Next, they enter a URL, customize its appearance, and place it across their image or video

Similar to Instagram's Link Stickers, Clickable Links assist creators in driving traffic to external landing pages, such as a website, a product page, an affiliate link, or content on another social media platform.

Adding a link to a LinkedIn post has always been possible, but Clickable Links provide a much more visual experience, increasing the likelihood of viewers clicking through. This, combined with the recently released URL on Profile feature, helps creators convert more of LinkedIn’s 850 million users.

At launch, Clickable Links’ functionality is limited, but future enhancements, such as options for font and colors, would allow for increased customization and effectiveness.

In the past, social media platforms offered very little support for link sharing, probably so users would keep engaging within their app. But, as platforms ramp up their support for creators and their needs, many now allow them to share links to external destinations. Could we see Instagram or TikTok add native link sharing for feed and video posts down the road? It's quite possible.

YouTube Gives Creators The Ability To Create Shorts From Existing Long-Form Videos

YouTubers now have a way to turn their long-form video-on-demand content into Shorts. Using a new Edit into a Short option on videos, creators can choose up to 60 seconds of their videos to create a Short and access tools such as text, timelines, and filters. When creators select less than 60 seconds of their videos, they can record or upload videos to add additional content. Shorts created from existing VOD will link back to the original video. Unlike Remix features that let creators use other creators’ videos, only the original creators can import their video-on-demand for Shorts creation.

The short-form video war is no secret. Platforms are working hard to become creators' preferred destination for short-form videos. One way to do this is to make it easier for them to create such content. This new option does exactly that since creators can leverage existing content. This enables them to cover two fronts - adding algorithm-friendly, short-form videos to their channel and increasing the discovery of long-form videos.

Creators aren’t the only ones who can benefit from this. Marketers can optimize their YouTube influencer marketing campaigns by adding a deliverable for creators to make Shorts out of the main sponsored content to increase its discovery and reach.

With over 1.5 billion monthly logged-in users now consuming Shorts, the short-form video format provides new opportunities for creators and their content to be discovered.

TikTok & Ticketmaster Team Up To Help Users Discover Upcoming Events & Purchase Tickets In-App

TikTok and Ticketmaster have teamed up for a new way for users to discover upcoming events and purchase tickets in-app on TikTok.

Eligible creators can search for Ticketmaster event listings and add the event links to their videos. After their video is published, an event link will appear in the bottom-left of the screen, where viewers can click through for more information and purchase tickets.

Artists and entertainment companies, including The Weeknd, Wiz Khalifa, Usher, Demi Lovato, OneRepublic, and the WWE, signed on to use the feature.

With an abundance of music, sports, and entertainment-related content across TikTok, creators can enrich their content and make it more actionable through the integration. Instead of users leaving TikTok to purchase tickets to events they discover, they can do so from the convenience of their TikTok feed. With fewer steps, the experience is more streamlined and will likely results in more sales.

The partnership is the latest addition to TikTok Jump, a program that lets third-party apps integrate with TikTok and allows creators to use them in their content. Among the other integrations available are Rotten Tomatoes, Instacart, and Whisk.

As TikTok continues to add new integrations, one has to wonder when it will consider giving creators a cut of sales that they drive when using the integrations in their content. It would be an easy way to encourage creators while providing another pathway to monetization.

LinkedIn Tests A Dedicated Space For Users To Discover Content Outside Their Network

LinkedIn is testing a dedicated space for users to discover new content outside their network. With tabs such as Top, Videos, Newsletters, and Events, users can find trending content aligned with their professional interests, news, and relevant events curated by LinkedIn's editorial team.

According to Blake Barnes, the VP of Product at LinkedIn, LinkedIn witnessed a 2X increase in people engaging with posts that share knowledge, ideas, and advice. Also, more users are using content search to find content from people they aren’t connected with.

Personalized content recommendations are quite familiar across social media today. From TikTok's For You Page to Instagram Explore, users are being presented with content that platforms think they will prefer. LinkedIn looks to do this with its current test. However, instead of relying on algorithms, it uses human curation, which is slightly different from market trends.

This approach could result in higher-quality content being pushed to users through the discovery experience, but the content being shown may only come from more established creators due to manually selected content. To make this initial test successful, the LinkedIn editorial team should make it a point to curate content from creators of all sizes to make it an all-compassing discovery experience.

YouTube Experiments With Giving Creators More Music Options For Their Videos

YouTube announced that it is expanding its partnership with music labels and publishers to give creators more music options for their videos. As a result, creators would be able to access copyrighted music and still be eligible for monetization. Previously, they could not earn money from videos with copyrighted music.

YouTube says it’s currently testing this with a limited group of creators and plans on sharing an update in the coming months.

Although details are scarce, YouTube is following a similar path to Meta, which recently announced Music Revenue Sharing, which allows creators for the first time to earn money on Facebook videos that include popular, licensed music.

Like Music Revenue Sharing, the new initiative gives creators flexibility in using popular music in their content instead of generic, royalty-free tunes with the added benefit of making money from them. At the same time, music rights holders will get more discovery and money in their pockets by licensing their music to creators.

What will this mean for brands? Since creators will still be eligible for monetization for videos with copyrighted music, brands may not have to be as strict with the type of music they instruct creators to use for sponsored content in their briefs. Many brands would prefer that creators use trending music for their content since that can help their content to be discovered and resonate. However, as of right now, brands typically would need to secure licensing deals with the owners of that music to comply with platform guidelines around music usage, especially for branded content.

What I’m Reading

• A TikTok rival promised millions to Black creators. Now some are deep in debt (The Washington Post)

• It’s time to retire the term ‘whitelisting,’ some influencer marketers argue (Marketing Brew)

• Brands are getting creative with being real (Marketing Brew)

• Podcast guests are paying up to $50,000 to appear on popular shows (Bloomberg)

• Meta has been quietly testing a new livestreaming platform and is ramping up creator outreach (Business Insider)