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British TV Presenters ‘Earning up to £15K Per Instagram Post’

Holly Willoughby, Ant & Dec and Stacey Solomon lead a list of the leading Instagram earners working on UK TV, with fees topping out at nearly £15,000 per post.

The insight comes after GamblingDeals.com identified the top British TV presenters by researching the biggest and trending UK TV shows, with only British TV presenters who present and/or reside in the UK chosen. They then used Influencer Marketing Hub’s Sponsored Post Money Calculator to calculate the maximum potential earnings of each account per sponsored post.

In first place is Holly Willoughby, with the potential to earn £14,174.16 per sponsored post on Instagram. As one of daytime TV’s best-dressed presenters, her sense of style and kind-natured approach apparently sits well with 6.9 million Instagram fans and could help to earn her a little extra on top of her handsome salary.

Britain’s well-loved Geordie duo Ant & Dec claim second place. As the faces of I’m a Celebrity Get me Out of Here!, Britain’s Got Talent and more, the entertainers could rake in up to £8,507.73 per post on Instagram.

Once famous from The X-Factor but now a staple in daytime TV, cheery Stacey Solomon claims third place. Her uplifting Instagram posts with partner in crime Joe Swash and their newborn could earn her a hefty £7,850.15 if they were sponsored.

In fourth place is adventurer-turned-TV-presenter Bear Grylls with the earning potential of £7,652.26 per post, followed by radio and TV broadcaster Fearne Cotton in fifth – with a new podcast to plug and a focus on mental wellbeing, positive engagements with her fans could earn her an impressive £6,643.56 extra per collaboration.

Completing the top ten earners on Instagram are:

  • Phillip Schofield – up to £6,568.87 per post
  • Jeremy Clarkson – up to £6,274.73 per post
  • Rochelle Humes – up to £4,264.26 per post
  • Mark Wright – up to £3,634.40 per post
  • Emma Willis – up to £3,572.03 per post

All earnings are estimates only. Data was calculated on 30/10/20 and accurate as of then.

The top 20 earning TV presenters

TV presenterInstagram (@)Number of Instagram followersEstimated potential earnings per post (£)
1Holly Willoughbyhollywilloughby6.9m14,174.16
2Ant & Decantanddec4.1m8,507.73
3Stacey Solomonstaceysolomon3.8m7,850.15
4Bear Gryllsbeargrylls3.7m7,652.26
5Fearne Cottonfearnecotton3.2m6,643.56
6Phillip Schofieldschofe3.2m6,568.87
7Jeremy Clarksonjeremyclarkson13m6,274.73
8Rochelle Humesrochellehumes2m4,264.26
9Mark Wrightwrighty_1.7m3,634.40
10Emma Willisemmawillisofficial1.7m3,572.03
11Paddy McGuinnessmcguinness.paddy1.7m3,554.32
12Joe Swashrealjoeswashy1.6m3,449.60
13Katie Piperkatiepiper_983,0003,009.16
14Ruth Langsfordruthlangsford969,0002,968.35
15Rylan Clark-Nealrylan1.4m2,929.85
16Kate Garrawaykategarraway952,0002,918.30
17Stacey Dooleysjdooley918,0002,811.27
18Nick Grimshawnicholasgrimshaw1.3m2,799.72
19Piers Morganpiersmorgan1.2m2,620.31
20Davina McCalldavinamccall1.2m2,544.85
SNP-Social

Do you specialise in Social Media Content & Strategy? We want to hear from you!

Each month on Digital Marketing Briefing we’re shining the spotlight on different parts of the print and marketing sectors – and in May we’ll be focussing on Social Media Content & Strategy.

It’s all part of our ‘Recommended’ editorial feature, designed to help marketing industry professionals find the best products and services available today.

So, if you specialise in Social Media Content & Strategy solutions and would like to be included as part of this exciting new shop window, we’d love to hear from you – for more info, contact James Howe on j.howe@forumevents.co.uk.

Here are the areas we’ll be covering, month by month:

May – Social Media
Jun – Brand Monitoring
Jul – Web Analytics
Aug – Conversion Rate Optimisation
Sep – Digital Signage
Oct – Brochure Printing
Nov – Creative & Design
Dec – Online Strategy

Instagram ‘attracting a larger audience than Facebook’ among brands

Instagram has a larger audience and nearly 20X more interactions than Facebook among top 50 brand profiles, according to Socialbakers’ new Q4 2019 Trends Report.

Key insights from the report include Instagram overtaking Facebook in audience size, the relative decline in engagement during the holiday season, the popularity of vertical videos, the dominance of women among fans and followers, growing ad spend, and the continuing explosion of influencer marketing. 

“The writing has been on the wall for some time, but now it’s official. When it comes to the top 50 biggest brand profiles, Instagram has a larger audience than Facebook,” said Yuval Ben-Itzhak CEO, Socialbakers. “That development was not a surprise. What was unexpected in Q4 2019, however, was the relative decline in engagement during the holiday season. This is a warning sign that brands require a deeper understanding of which types of content their audiences find compelling, and an agile method to get that content in front of them.”

The key findings of the Q4 2019 Trends report include:

·         For the first time globally, Instagram surpassed Facebook in audience size – but for the top UK brand profiles, Facebook still has a marginally bigger audience, but greater engagement is found on Instagram

·         Despite efforts to attract consumers during the holiday period, post interactions for both Instagram and Facebook were lower in Q4 2019 than Q4 2018

·         Women make up the majority of fans and followers of brand pages on Instagram and Facebook, representing over half (56.4%) of the audience engaging with brands

·         Whilst 70% of videos on Facebook brand pages are shot horizontally, viewers are more likely to complete a vertical video than horizontal (29.9% vs. 22.2% respectively)

·         Ad spend on Instagram Stories increased by 40% over the last year, and by 91% over the last two years. Meanwhile, in the UK, brands are still posting more to the Instagram News Feed

·         The number of influencers using #Ad exploded by 90.5% in Q4 2019

·         The Services category (including lawyers, accounting services and IT services) found a 66.7% jump in engagement

Based on the top 50 biggest brand profiles worldwide, there was a notable change in Q4 2019. For the first time, the total audience on Instagram surpassed the total audience size on Facebook. Additionally, the total interactions on Instagram were nearly 20 times larger than those on Facebook. So, even though the top 50 brands published more posts on Facebook, the engagement on those posts didn’t reach the numbers that Instagram was able to achieve.

For the top UK brand profiles Facebook still has a marginally bigger audience. However, while brands are posting roughly the same amount of content to Facebook and Instagram, they are seeing significantly more engagement on Instagram. The lesson here is that UK brands need to focus on their Instagram strategy as by splitting their content between both platforms they are likely leaving interactions on the table. 

Engagement: A surprising drop in interactions

In the UK the industries that are seeing the most engagement across Facebook and Instagram are ecommerce, fashion and retail. The data shows that ecommerce brands are really leveraging the potential of Facebook, whilst Fashion brands are running the show on Instagram. 

Despite attempts to attract consumers during the holiday season, the relative post interactions for both Instagram and Facebook were lower in Q4 2019 than a year ago. This was true even among the most successful industries on social media. Fashion, the top industry on Instagram, decreased by 19.4%, while the top industry on Facebook, Ecommerce, decreased by 9.6% versus Q3 2019. This may indicate that brands need to get smarter about the content they post, and focus on top quality content in smaller volumes to increase engagement.

However, one interesting success story in Q4 engagement is the Services category. It achieved a 66.7% jump in engagement on Instagram compared to Q3 2019. On Facebook, Services finished fourth with 7.6% of total interactions after not making the top eight in the previous quarter. Services is a wide-ranging category that includes lawyers, accounting services, hairdressers, car repairs, IT services, conference and event organisers, and weight loss courses.

Format: Vertical videos pull viewers in

Marketers often wonder whether viewers prefer videos that were shot horizontally or those that were shot vertically. Currently, about 70% of videos on Facebook brand pages are shot horizontally. But according to Q4 data from those Facebook brand pages, vertical videos perform better than horizontal videos across the board. For videos shorter than 30 seconds (which is the most popular video length), vertical videos were completed by viewers 29.9% of the time, while horizontal videos were completed 22.2% of the time. 

Demographics: Women are dominant on social media

According to the Q4 2019 data, women make up the majority of fans and followers of brand pages on both Instagram and Facebook. On Instagram, 58% of brand page followers were female, comprising the majority of every age demographic. On Facebook, women made up 56.7% of the total audience of page fans, although there were slightly more men in the 18-24 age demographic. Women are also the largest group of people mentioning and interacting with brand pages in the prime marketing demographic of 25-34. Overall, women represented 56.4% of the audience engaging with brands in Q4 2019.

Ad spend: Instagram rises but Facebook remains the leader

As in past quarters, ad spend on Instagram Stories continues its rapid growth, although Facebook Feed remains the leader with 58.3% of total ad spend. For the first time, Instagram Stories reached 10% of ad spend in the second half of 2019. Overall, the spend on Instagram Stories increased by 40% over the last year, and by 91% over the last two years.

In the UK the data shows that brands are still posting more to the News Feed. Since Stories are proving to be a highly engaging content format globally, perhaps UK brands need to up their game on Stories. 

Other ad spend trends include the rise of Instagram Explore and Facebook Marketplace as a destination for advertising dollars. In its first five months, the percentage of ad spend on Instagram Explore grew to 1.32%. And over the last year, ad spend on Facebook Marketplace grew from 0.72% in December 2018 to 1.31% at the end of 2019, an increase of more than 80%.

Influencer marketing: No sign of slowing down

One trend that remains unchanged is the skyrocketing growth of influencer marketing. In Q4 2019, the number of influencers using #Ad or the local language version in their posts exploded by 90.5%. For the third straight quarter, the top Instagram brand profile in the world associated with influencers was Walmart, which had 854 mentions from 619 influencers in Q4 2019. Other profiles with successful influencer partnerships included Daniel Wellington, iDeal Of Sweden, and FashionNova.com.

The complete Q4 2019 Social Media Trends Report with supporting graphics is now available for free download.

Using Facebook for marketing success

By Strange

What’s the main focus of your digital marketing strategy? At one time, everyone would have said Google. These days, however, Facebook has become a credible alternative for many businesses. As an agency, we’ve developed considerable resources and capabilities to service the huge growth in clients’ use of the platform.

You may already appreciate the sophisticated features and capabilities combined with enormous reach and powerful targeting that Facebook offers. These can deliver great returns for almost any brand or organisation, whether used for acquisition, awareness or direct response, for example.

Being a Facebook Marketing Partner certainly helps us deliver better value for clients. Facebook defines Marketing Partners as “tech companies and agencies that have been vetted by Facebook and certified for their excellence in helping advertisers get the most from their campaigns.” 

New insights on the Facebook Auction 

As a Marketing Partner, we can access information and insights from Facebook that may not be widely available. In this article we’re sharing some valuable information we were recently given on the Facebook Ad Auction. We hope this helps make the auction process work better for you.

The Facebook Auction is the process by which Facebook’s algorithms spend advertising budgets in the most effective way possible. How these auctions work has, for a long time, been somewhat opaque, but Facebook has now started to release more information about how the system works.

1. Simplify your campaign structure 

A typical Facebook account structure looks something like this. It can have multiple campaigns organised into different marketing approaches, strategies or tactics. Campaigns are subdivided by highly defined, narrow audiences at ad set level.

But if your account structure could look like the one below, Facebook claims that a simplified and consolidated structure leads to what they call increased ‘auction signal’, i.e. it increases the available signals Facebook’s algorithm has to work with when it decides where and how to deploy budget. 

Combining your campaigns and ad sets into larger buckets helps because it removes constraints on the system so that it can search for the best areas of opportunity within larger groups of people, instead of being restricted to granular, pre-defined audiences.

The primary benefit of a consolidated account structure, however, is that it will help drive a faster exit from Facebook’s ‘learning phase’ because the algorithm has more information to work with.

2. Respect the learning phase

Facebook’s learning phase is when the delivery system explores the best way to deliver your ad sets after launch. This means that performance is less stable, and CPAs will actually be worse during this time because the engine is still working out the best people and places to show the ad. Anything that you can do to exit the learning phase earlier will therefore help to improve overall campaign performance. 

Fortunately there are some straightforward rules you can follow to make sure your campaigns have enough data to exit the learning phase in a timely manner. For instance, making sure that your targeting and placements aren’t too narrow will really help give the auction more signal. 

It’s also very important that you optimise for the right conversion event. If you’re optimising for a conversion event which is too far along the funnel for you to reach a sufficient number of conversions, try switching to something which will record more conversions – for example, optimising for ‘Add to Carts’ instead of ‘Purchases’. A higher number of conversion events will ultimately help you get past the learning phase threshold and improve overall optimisation.

One last critical piece of advice: do your best to avoid frequent manual edits! Whilst it may be tempting to constantly tune and tweak your campaigns, making significant changes can reset the learning phase so that the algorithm has to start all over again. Any changes to the following can cause your campaigns to re-enter the learning phase:

  • Targeting
  • Placements
  • Creative (including adding additional ads)
  • Optimisation events
  • Pausing your ad set for more than 7 days
  • Bid strategy
  • Budgets

Key takeaways

  1. Consolidate your account structure for maximum auction signal
  2. Give the Facebook system as many data points as possible so that it can exit the learning phase quickly
  3. Don’t narrow your targeting too much and optimise for the right conversion events to reach the learning phase threshold
  4. Avoid frequent manual edits so that your campaigns don’t re-enter the learning phase

Continuing to evolve

Facebook has come a long way since its Marketplace was originally launched in 2007. Back then we were helping clients use the brand new channel (we’re now celebrating our 20th anniversary as an agency) and we’ve been keeping abreast of Facebook’s evolution ever since.

Future changes are inevitable. However the platform shapes itself in the future our focus as an agency will always be on working in partnership with Facebook to bring greater value to our clients.

Read more about Strange here

UK public ‘doesn’t trust social media’ or influencers

Rightly or wrongly, Brits don’t always trust what they see on their favourite social platforms.

That’s according to data from YouGov, which indicates 41% of regular users claim to have seen inaccurate content over the last month, while nearly a fifth of (17%) mainstream social media users go even further and say they’ve seen completely false content.

What’s more, 21% of users say they’ve come across content they consider to be misleading, 20% say they’ve come across misinformed content, and 19% say they’ve seen content that’s been manipulated or distorted.

Typically, the younger a user is, the more likely he or she is to have noticed information that is misleading. Are older people more likely to take social posts at face value?

Moreover, no single group of users is considered completely authentic: only 25% of regular users say that the profiles of their family give a ‘very honest’ portrayal – and friends, colleagues, celebrities and influencers perform even worse.

Almost half of users (48%) believe that the profiles of celebrities are either ‘not at all’ or ‘somewhat dishonest’, with only 22% believing that the reverse is true (‘honest’ or ‘very honest’ portrayals).

In addition, regular users of social networks are sceptical of ‘super-influencer’ Kim Kardashian, with 68% agreeing that her posts don’t represent real life. Yet despite this she continues to be one of social media’s biggest draws, and has the sixth most-followed profile on Instagram. Most users like their celebrities and influencers to be a little more authentic: 64% agree that it’s refreshing when they’re honest with their posts.

Regular visitors to social media platforms set standards for honesty at different heights for different groups of posters. Dishonesty by influencers is seen as much more important (54%) than dishonesty from family members (35%), so we’re clearly more forgiving of people we know and love – or we expect less of them.

WeYouGove also observed those who explicitly seek payment for their products to higher standards. Overall, 28% of users have noticed this kind of influencer/celebrity marketing in the past month but almost half of them (49%) agree that these posts don’t represent the person making the endorsement.

The analysis says it’s worth noting, however, that this distrust is in line with perceptions of TV advertising among the same group – almost half (46%) don’t trust adverts on TV. And regardless of whether users believe the ads, the majority of those who notice them engage with them in some way.

You can download the whitepaper here.

Brits falling victim to fraud via social media

Social media could be responsible for an increasing number of young Brits falling victim to fraud, new research has revealed.

Data shows that 47 per cent of payment scams in the last year were among under 30s, with over half (52 per cent) believing they have been approached by scammers on social media.

A massive 85 per cent have shared details on Instagram that could leave them open to ID theft, and a shocking six per cent say they would allow someone remote access to their bank account.

A further four in ten also say they would provide personal and security detail to somebody phoning up claiming to be from their bank.

In a bid to educate young Brits about scams and fraud Santander has teamed up with Kurupt FM from BAFTA-winning BBC TV show People Just Do Nothing to launch its latest fraud awareness campaign, ‘MC Grindah’s Deadliest Dupes’.

The three episode mini-series follows MC Grindah as he goes undercover to investigate the murky underbelly of scams and fraud and has been created to grab the attention of younger audiences online.

They will feature identity theft, online scams and money laundering as the focal topics, and are set to run across Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube to capture the key audience.

Susan Allen, Head of Retail & Business Banking, Santander UK, said: “We’re committed to fighting financial crime and work hard to raise awareness of fraud and scams with all age groups.

“We recognised that to engage younger audiences with these important messages, we needed to do something different and memorable.

“We hope that everyone, no matter what age, will enjoy Deadliest Dupes and learn how to stay safe so they Don’t Get Kurupted.”

Deadliest Dupes follows previous fraud awareness campaigns run by Santander including its Phish & Chips van which toured the UK handing out free fish and chips and a side portion of advice on avoiding scams.

A Scam Avoidance School introduced in branches in 2018 has been attended by over 100,000 people to date.

A new online hub has been set up to support the campaign.

Those at risk can find out more about the tricks used by online fraudsters and test their own ‘scam smarts’ with a specially designed quiz.

Public demands social networks combat ‘fake news’

85% of people agree that social media companies have a responsibility to remove fake news, according to new research by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM).

The vast majority (79%) of people also believe that social media companies should be monitoring for fake news on their platforms. Only four in ten (39%) believe government shares this responsibility, running counter to points raised by former Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg now of Facebook, earlier this week.

The results of a nationwide survey of over 2,000 adults is being published ahead of the close of the Government’s consultation on online harms on 1 July and will feature in CIM’s submission to the consultation.

The results point to the fact that the Government’s White Paper doesn’t address the presence of fake news on social media unless it is causing a specific harm. Our research uncovered a widespread expectation that social media companies are responsible for removing fake news from their platforms.

Chris Daly, Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, said: “At CIM, we are concerned about the damage fake content has upon public trust. As marketers we spend £3.9bn on internet display advertising with the aim of bringing value to our customers.* Our professional members and the marketing industry as a whole needs confidence they are spending their marketing budgets wisely.

The public are unequivocal in their belief that it is the responsibility of social media companies to find and remove fake news from their platforms. Yet the Government’s proposals for regulating social media platforms will not require them to monitor and remove it. In other words, even after the introduction of regulation, fake news may continue unchecked.”

Half of adults (51%) with a social media account say that they have seen something they would consider to be fake news in the past three months, with a third of people (31%) saying they had seen fake news in the past week.

This prevalence of fake news on social media is the likely cause of declining confidence in the accuracy of social media content. In a similar survey in 2014, the Chartered Institute of Marketing found that 62% indicated that they trusted content on social media (giving a score of 6 out of ten or more). By 2019, this had fallen to 34%, with only 1% saying that they are very confident (a score of nine or ten out of ten) that information on social media is accurate or genuine.

The Government’s proposals also provide an exemption for private messaging. However, when asked as part of the survey most of the public believe that there should be some level of monitoring of private messages on platforms like WhatsApp.

  • Monitoring of messages made by people with a history of problematic behaviour online is backed by 41%
  • While 31% believe private messages should be monitored for “buzz words”
  • Only one in four (26%) said that they did not believe private messages should be monitored

Image by Pixelkult from Pixabay

Retailers ‘neglecting Twitter and Facebook for customer service’

Retailers are neglecting social media when it comes to customer service, and are not listening to consumers to drive customer experience improvements.

That’s according to the 2019 Eptica Digital Trust Study, which found that while retailers successfully answered 59% of routine queries asked via web self service, chat, email, Facebook and Twitter, there were wide variations in performance between channels.

Retailers provided answers to 83% of queries on their websites but only responded correctly to 38% of tweets and 50% of Facebook messages. Performance had worsened on many channels since 2017 – then retailers answered 73% of emails.

By 2019 this had dropped to 68%, despite the continued popularity of the channel with consumers, who use it for over a quarter of their interactions with brands.

As part of the study, 20 fashion and food & drink retailers were evaluated on their digital customer experience, alongside brands from other sectors, by testing their accuracy and speed at answering relevant, routine queries, repeating research conducted since 2012. Questions included asking about ethical sourcing policies (fashion) and allergy labelling (food and drink).

Additionally, 1,000 consumers were asked for their views on customer experience.

Fashion (answering 60% of all queries) and food and drink (59%) were the top sectors surveyed but still failed to respond to 4 in 10 of all routine queries.

The research also demonstrated a direct link between trust, listening and loyalty. 89% of consumers surveyed said they either will stop buying from brands that they don’t trust or will spend less. Building trust begins with delivering on basic promises – 59% ranked giving satisfactory, consistent answers as a top three factor in creating trustworthiness, while 63% rated making processes easy and seamless as key. Just 8% of consumers felt that brands were listening to them all of the time, with 74% believing brands pay attention to their views half the time or less.

“The move to digital has transformed the retail landscape,” said Olivier Njamfa, CEO and Co-Founder, Eptica. “Greater choice means consumers are becoming more demanding and are actively seeking out brands that they can trust and who listen to them. While retail brands have made some improvements since 2017, they have slipped back in others, damaging trust and ultimately customer loyalty and revenues. If they want to succeed they need to listen to customers and use their insight. Only those who do this will thrive and stay ahead of the competition.”

Retail Accuracy 2019
versus 2017
Average speed 2019
versus 2017
Web 83% vs 70% n/a
Email 68% vs 73% 10hr 19m vs 24hr 12m
Facebook 50% vs 28% 43m 24s vs 3hr 34m
Twitter 38% vs 50% 1hr 56m vs 1hr 43m
Chat 35% vs 25% 8m 43s 4m 24s
Total 59% vs 55%

Speed of response also varied widely between channels – and even within sectors and brands. One fashion retailer answered a tweet in 17 minutes, yet another took 50 hours to reply. A food and drink retailer responded on Facebook within one minute but needed nearly 23 hours to provide an answer on email. Overall response times on chat doubled from 4 minutes back in 2017 to 8 minutes this year. Facebook had the fastest average speed of response, at 43 minutes, 24 seconds – over twice as fast as Twitter (1 hour 56 minutes) and nearly 15 times faster than email (10 hours 19 minutes). This is despite exactly the same questions being asked across these channels.

The study evaluated 50 UK brands, split equally between the fashion, food and drink, travel, insurance and banking sectors. Brands were rated on their ability to answer five routine questions via their websites, as well as their speed, accuracy and consistency when responding to email, Twitter, Facebook and chat. Additionally, 1,000 UK consumers were surveyed on their attitude to trust, its relationship with customer experience and on loyalty and brand reputation. All research was completed in H1 2019.

A full report, including the study results, graphics and best practice recommendations for brands to transform customer experience is available at https://www.eptica.com/19cxretail.

An infographic on the results is available at https://www.eptica.com/state-uk-retail-customer-experience-infographic-2019.

Do you specialise in Social Media management? We want to hear from you!

Each month on Digital Marketing Briefing we’re shining the spotlight on different parts of the print and marketing sectors – and in May we’ll be focussing on Social Media.

It’s all part of our ‘Recommended’ editorial feature, designed to help marketing industry professionals find the best products and services available today.

So, if you specialise in Social Media solutions and would like to be included as part of this exciting new shop window, we’d love to hear from you – for more info, contact James Howe on j.howe@forumevents.co.uk.

Here are the areas we’ll be covering, month by month:

May – Social Media

Jun – Brand Monitoring

Jul – Web Analytics

Aug – Conversion Rate Optimisation

Sept – Digital Signage

Oct – Brochure Printing

Nov – Creative & Design

Dec – Online Strategy

For more information on any of the above topics, contact James Howe on j.howe@forumevents.co.uk.

Article 13 has implications for marketers

The European Union’s decision to pass Article 13, which will introduce more stringent copyright laws online, has implications for marketers, argues Andy Barr Founder and MD of www.10yetis.co.uk…

On the face of things, Article 13 sounds as though it could stifle the creativity of millions of internet users who create funny and original content. However, it does look as though the law will make exceptions for “parody or pastiche” content, which means our GIFs and memes might be safe, for now.

The real headache here will be for the platforms on which people freely share content of this ilk, that may have vague copyright confusion surrounding it. Channels such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube will have to police uploads even more carefully to ensure content uploaded by its users doesn’t violate anything outlined in Article 13, or else be held accountable in some way.

They therefore may have to build even more robust and intelligent upload filters, which could be both time consuming and expensive. How exactly these systems will be able to differentiate between prohibited content and light-hearted, spoof postings is anyone’s guess.

This could cause problems for the social media industry, because memes and GIFs have historically been such an easy way to – for want of a better term – “go viral” and now content that teams create could get blocked for copyright issues under the watchful eye of these new upload filters that will have to spring into action; despite the fact that they may not actually breach any rules if the leniency with GIFs and memes is to be believed.

If anything, though, this will encourage social media teams and marketers to come up with more creative, original content – which to be honest could be a breath of fresh air for the industry.

Finally, the new “link tax” that is implied in Article 13 could leave platforms such as Google or Facebook with hefty bills for linking out to content which may have copyright implications, because paying publishers to link to the content from their platform could simply not be feasible on the scale it currently happens out.

Google has already hinted that it may have to shut down Google News, which is detrimental to the PR and media industry as it means that stories might not get as much reach. Hopefully, the implications of this will mean that some sort of solution is thought up to benefit everyone, instead of creating such a restrictive environment for sharing on the net.”