Meta’s big win, Australia’s social media ban and Mel Robbins’ rise

0:00Jasmine Enberg: Hi, everyone. This is Scalable, a weekly show about the business of the creator economy. I'm Kaya Yurieff. And I'm Jasmine Enberg. Every Thursday, we take you beyond the headlines to tell you what's happening, what it means, and why it matters. Here are the creator economy headlines you need to know this week. Meta scored a huge win in court. A federal judge ruled that it is not a monopoly, which was a big blow to the FTC, which had, of course, argued that it should spin off Instagram and WhatsApp. Of all of her eras, social media has been the most lucrative for Bethany Frankel. She makes more money on social than she did on The Real Housewives or from her alcohol brand Skin Girl.

0:37Social platforms could be making more money from influencer marketing than creators themselves, according to new research from the IAB and advertiser perceptions.

0:46Jasmine Enberg: Facebook is rolling out a tool to help protect original content from creators. Joe Rogan dethroned the New York Times podcast The Daily to become the most popular podcast in 2025 according to Apple.

1:02Jasmine Enberg: Hi, Jasmine. Hey, Kaya. As you can see, I do not have my podcast mic still. So the saga continues. So hopefully by next week, I'll have it. But who knows? I did get my lighting kit, though. So hopefully the light in this room is a little bit better than it was last time. I have the window back there, I know, which causes a little bit of difficulties with this setup. The lighting looks good. Your lighting is good. So every week the show will get better and better. You have been out and about this week. You were at an event earlier this week. How'd it go? I have been out and about. I drove all the way across LA, which is basically a long distance trip because of all the traffic.

1:37But it was well worth it. I went to Artists and the Machines AI and Creativity Summit, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's a place where brands, tech startups, artists all come together and talk about the ways that AI is reshaping creativity. Grimes was the headliner. I moderated a panel on how legacy brands are also tackling AI initiatives, which was really cool. It was with Gap and Mattel, and we walked through some of the challenges as well as the opportunities within the space. So really great event. It's nice to see so many more popping up around here in LA too. Let's get into the headlines.

2:14Jasmine Enberg: One of the big news stories this week was Meta's big regulatory win. So a federal judge ruled that it is not a social networking monopoly. So that was a big blow to the FTC, which argued it should spin off Instagram and WhatsApp. If you remember, Adam Masseri, Mark Zuckerberg, everyone was in court earlier this year in DC. So big, big win for Meta. The judge sided with Meta that it has plenty of competition from social apps like TikTok and YouTube. I think what also stuck out to me is he noted how much the social media landscape has changed since the FTC filed this case. And a big piece of that is AI.

2:51Jasmine Enberg: And he pointed to AI-generated content. So this really all undermines the agency's arguments. But curious kind of what you made of everything, Jasmine. Yeah, I mean, the same kind of thing stuck out to me, too. And it's not just AI that has changed the social media landscape. If you think back to 2012, when Facebook acquired Instagram, Snapchat had just launched. TikTok didn't even exist. And we have so many options now for social networks that really weren't even cited as competitors in this case. And, you know, we spend time on all of them. We like to think of Gen Z as a TikTok generation. And yes, they love TikTok and they spend a ton of time there, but they're also spending time across so many different apps.

3:32The one piece, though, that really wasn't talked about quite as much, at least not in what I've read so far, is revenue. While our social media usage is very fragmented across all of these apps, Meta is the biggest player within the social ad market. So its apps account for about three quarters of all social network ad spending in the U.S. So you can see that it is very heavily consolidated toward those platforms.

3:58Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, and I think too, even in the last three to six months on the AI front, there's so much AI-generated content. And I think it's the New York Times that does the quizzes that are like, you have to guess what's AI-generated. And regularly, I get half of them wrong, and I feel like I'm pretty good at it. So that's also interesting because every day it feels like AI is getting better, and you're seeing more creative uses of it, more Reels and TikToks that are AI. So that was very interesting. And I would say quite timely of the judge to point out. When you get those wrong, are you guessing that AI generated content is actually real world content or vice versa?

4:35Like, how is it going? Yeah, that's so interesting to me. It's not just that people can't spot what is AI generated. It's that sometimes they think that real world content is made with AI. So clearly it's, you know, it goes both ways and it's just it's all getting so confusing. So Meta obviously dodged a big bullet with this one, but the threat of regulation is still looming, especially if we look over to Australia. Some Australian influencers are actually taking really dramatic steps to avoid the upcoming teen social media ban. The BBC reported that one influencer family is moving to the UK. The so-called Empire family has millions of social media followers, and the youngest family member is only 14, which means that once the ban goes into effect, she won't be able to have her own social media accounts or make any posts.

5:27So, Kaya, obviously, this ban has been a hot topic for quite some time now. We've heard about it on Tuesday. Tell us what's going on. What are the specifics?

5:37Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, things are starting to heat up because we talked about we've been talking about the ban for a while. Then it was quiet. But now as we're getting into, you know, the enactment period, so December 10th, it goes into effect. So we're starting to see companies more publicly release things ahead of it. So basically, the high level is that users under 16 in Australia won't be able to create or maintain accounts on certain social media platforms. Coming into the ban, the Australian government has actually kept expanding the list. So initially, YouTube wasn't on the list and all the other social platforms were mad about that and kind of lobbying for it to be.

6:07Jasmine Enberg: It's more recently added Reddit and Kik. Kick is a newer Twitch competitor. So those are now also included. So right now we're at nine. I don't know if they're going to start adding in more platforms or not. Roblox is one that's not included. And they this week proactively announced that they're going to be launching age verification features, including in Australia. So it's almost like trying to hedge their bets of not getting included at the last minute. But I think the high level rationale for the ban is obviously that social media has a detrimental effect on teens, and this is, you know, attempt to mitigate it.

6:40Jasmine Enberg: But I think what's interesting is that when you go deeper into the Australian government explanation of this, it says that social media, you know, increases the likelihood that, you know, teens will be exposed to pressures and risks that can be hard to deal with. But it specifically points to design features in social media that basically encourages you to spend more time on screens, makes it more likely that they'll see, you know, negative, you know, upsetting or manipulative content. And that seems to be a reference to recommendations, right, and getting into these rabbit holes that can either be political or, you know, self-harm content or all these different things.

7:12Jasmine Enberg: But one thing that's interesting that they talked, that they gave us an example, is that the pressure to, like, respond to a stream of notifications and alerts, but that's every app. Like, that's iMessage, that's WhatsApp, and those are not included in this ban. So I think it'll be an interesting test. I mean, one, if it's effective and it will work, I'm sure they'll do studies and try to measure mental health and try to, you know, have a pulse on whether this was effective. But it is really a starting point. And I think it's a whack-a-mole situation for Australia or any government where, like, you can't completely cut off teens from technology.

7:46Jasmine Enberg: And there's so many other ways through private messaging that teens can be exposed to, like, harmful content, bullying, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. And I mean, we have so many examples of that already happening, right? I mean, if you think about the TikTok ban in India, for example, like, that obviously wasn't just for teens. It was for all people in the country, but they shifted to other apps and teens are incredibly creative, right? And they find workarounds. They find ways to interact with each other. I think one of the things we pointed out in our Tuesday newsletter too, was how high school students were talking on Google Sheets so that they could pass notes in class.

8:22So clearly there's still a lot of questions about, you know, not only the scope, but the effectiveness of the ban. But one thing that, you know, really stood out to me is what is going to be the impact of all of this. And that's really hard to measure because there's very little data on Australian social media usage. I think one of the reports that we found was back from 2018. So we did a little back of the napkin math to try to come up with this. And we found some estimates for a teen social usage in the US that we use as a proxy. And so while teens and kids obviously love social media, they spend a lot of time there, they actually don't make up a very large percentage of most of these platforms users.

9:08So if you look at Facebook, for example, under 18 year olds make up just 4.7 % of US monthly users, according to eMarketer estimates. Now, of course, it's worth noting, too, that most of these platforms do already have an age limit of 13 in place. But we know, again, that kids find ways to get around many of those rules. There are platforms that, you know, have bigger teen and kid audiences. YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat are among those. We also know that on YouTube, people are spending a ton of time there. TikTok as well. The high-level takeaway for me is that while young people may not make up a huge proportion of overall social users, they do have an outsized impact on engagement, which then impacts the platform's ability to bring in revenue.

9:55Jasmine Enberg: I think the challenge too is like, what is the effectiveness of this? Because the platforms have to take reasonable accommodations. Platforms generally have said that they want to comply. TikTok, for example, told us this week that it's committed to complying with the law and that Australians under the age of 16 and those suspected to be under 16 will have their TikTok accounts deactivated on December 10th, and that they also plan to share information with parents and teens to kind of understand the changes that are happening in Australia. But the question is, how do they do this effectively, right?

10:25Jasmine Enberg: Like if they put in age verification, and you have to upload a photo or all these different things, I mean, how different does a 16 year old versus a 17 year old look or 18 year old, right? Like so many people could get caught up in this accidentally. And it doesn't seem like there's sort of an effective way for these companies to comply across the board. So one, we have to see if this is effective at all. And two, if there are ways, I don't know, maybe teams are going to use VPNs and still be on social media. There's a million ways that they can get around this. It raises a lot of privacy concerns too, right?

10:59I mean, many of these platforms will likely have to partner with third-party verification tools and we don't know about their privacy practices. Also things like facial recognition or scanning pose so many potential problems, especially when you're dealing with young people. I also wonder if you're asking them to provide IDs or age verification, how many 12-year-olds have an ID, right? Can they even provide that? So for me, I completely agree. There's a big open question in terms of how the platforms are actually going to be able to do this. And then if it raises even more problems. I mean, overall, I think it's just going to be a very inconsistent and disjointed rollout when it happens.

11:43Jasmine Enberg: It's interesting that Australia is where this is being tested, because Australia is actually a very popular testing ground for social media networks to test features in, because social media usage is very widespread. It's English speaking. It's far away from the US. So if people have backlash and hate a feature, it's probably not going to make its way over to the US. So it's interesting that this is where this is being tested. I think, you know, as we pointed out in the newsletter, you know, Australia is not some huge, huge market for these social media platforms in terms of users and revenue.

12:14Jasmine Enberg: But if it causes this ripple effect, right, like we're hearing in the EU, Denmark now is moving to also ban social media for under 15 year olds. So if the EU, you know, as a bloc starts, you know, moving forward with such regulation, these, you know, these efforts would really, you know, I think pose huge threats to social networks. So I think Australia is kind of a wait and see from the business side. And then we'll see if it catches, you know, steam with other countries as well. Yeah, I think it's the ripple effect, right, that these platforms and businesses and creators that rely on these platforms should be concerned about.

12:51I mean, the EU and the U.S. are far more lucrative, far bigger markets than Australia. And as you said, you know, many of these countries have already started introducing some forms of legislation. There's nearly two dozen states in the U.S. that have at least introduced some type of restrictions on teen social media usage. Now, many of these have been blocked by the courts, but clearly there's momentum in other parts of the world. And then if you're thinking more longer term, right, young people really are the biggest source of user and revenue growth for all of these social platforms. And digital habits are formed pretty early.

13:27So where these people are spending their time today could also determine who are the winners and losers in the social landscape moving forward. So there's, you know, plenty of reason for these platforms to be concerned.

13:40Jasmine Enberg: And I think just one last point, if I may, on the circumvention, you don't even have to have a TikTok account or a YouTube account to watch videos. So true. So I would say to be charitable to the platforms, they could also argue to the Australian government as like, okay, teens are going to be logged out and we're not going to know what age they are. And we're not going to have the built-in age filters that we have if they had an account, right? So, you know, meta doesn't really have that luxury because I don't think you can just go on Instagram and even on X, right? Like you have to be logged into X to really see the feed now.

14:13Jasmine Enberg: But it is, you know, it's a little bit of a moot point on the YouTube and TikTok side because that will be widely accessible without having to log in. Yeah, and I think that speaks to the overall challenge of regulating social media usage, right? And, you know, while I think everybody can agree that there are a lot of harms that can come from teens on social media, I think figuring out the right balance between, you know, how to sort of mitigate some of those risks and then also still allow them to be using certain apps where their friends are. I mean, there are also good things that can happen from social media.

14:49I mean, I think about, you know, all the communities that have formed, especially for, you know, high school students or middle school students who feel left out. And they found friends and communities on those apps. So I think there's still a lot of work to be done to find the right way in which to sort of mitigate those risks.

15:07Jasmine Enberg: Switching gears to some data, I am very curious about this new report from the IAB and kind of your takeaways. And I'm also interested why it's so different from the Goldman Sachs report that everyone cites. Well, let's start there because that is a question that I think everybody is asking. I think with a Goldman Sachs number, number one, it was just amazing to see a company like the Goldman Sachs paying attention to and trying to size the creator economy. It was a real sign of legitimacy. For me personally, too, because they actually cited eMarketer's influencer marketing estimates in the press release, and it sounded like they may have used that to kind of base some of their calculations on, though don't quote me on that because that may not be true, but still very cool to see.

15:51But while the half a trillion dollars by 2027 that they projected is a very nice, splashy number, they didn't really offer a lot of explanation in terms of how they got there and what their methodology was. Also, the Goldman Sachs number is global. The IAB was looking just at the US. So that explains some of the discrepancy there. And just for some context, the IAB is predicting that creator ad spending in the US will reach about$37 billion this year. The IAB was also super explicit in terms of what it included within this umbrella term of creator ad spending. So the first thing was direct partnerships with creators, which means what we normally think of when we think of influencer marketing, which are brand deals or brands paying creators to post sponsored content on their own channels.

16:43They also included paid amplification on social and on other channels like shopping, thinking about Amazon or LTK and some of those retail media partnerships. And CTV, which is growing now too. A lot of this is happening though still on social platforms through things like Meta's partnership ads or TikTok's Spark ads. And the last thing that they included in this were planned ad adjacencies or when brands are intentionally placing their ads against a specific creator's content. This is happening more and more often. Some of the platforms have actually rolled out tools to kind of facilitate this.

17:23And we've also seen, you know, creator upfronts, right? And creators trying to go directly to brands because so many more of them are now starting to plan their content. They actually sort of have a portfolio of content that they can present to brands. And so those were really the four things that are included in this$37 billion figure and helps to explain why it's different from Goldman Sachs.

17:47Jasmine Enberg: How big of a deal has paid amplification been? Because I feel like I've been hearing about this slowly for the past few years, but it feels like it's really revving up where now it's not just pure brand partnerships with creators and sponsors. They're really increasingly, it seems like brands are putting more paid. So they're basically boosting creator posts. And it was interesting because I think at first it's sort of counterintuitive where it's like, wait, you're partnering with the creator to reach their audience, but they are finding a lot of success with boosting that post to other audiences who might be interested.

18:17Jasmine Enberg: But yeah, what are the trends kind of there? Yeah, I mean, I think paid amplification started kind of as a workaround to some of the measurement challenges, which still exist within influencer marketing. It's also something that speaks the language of media buyers, right? They understand how to do it. These are familiar tools that they're using. So one thing that really stood out to me from the research and that we wrote about in Thursday's newsletter is that brands in the U.S. are now spending more boosting creator content as paid ads than they are spending on direct partnerships. Now, that money goes directly to the platforms instead of to the creators who are developing the content for the most part.

18:59I did not want this to be a hit piece by any means on the social platforms or brands, but it was just so interesting to see this shift in spending patterns and how influencer marketing budgets are now made up. The shift actually towards paid media amplification aligns very well with the launch of TikTok Spark ads back in late 2021. And recently, of course, we've seen Meta really push partnership ads. YouTube has also been focusing on its partnership ads and ways for creators and brands to partner together on the platform, things like Open Call, as well as a creator marketplace. And a lot of this is in an effort to catch up to meta and TikTok, but also shows that it's finally taking influencer marketing seriously on the platform.

19:49Now, these types of creator ads have obviously received a lot of criticism from creators. One of the things I hear all the time is that brands are out there preaching that they want to establish long-term relationships. But when you're simply taking a piece of creator content and boosting it as a paid ad, that feels super transactional and kind of turns creators into a media buy. Some of that, of course, is warranted, but I also think it really presents a very strong argument for better measurement frameworks and standards for influencer marketing. I mean, again, one of the big reasons that so many marketers and brands turn to paid ads is because they provide better reach, better targeting and better measurement than sponsored posts do.

20:30And rising tides really are lifting all ships. Again, you know, all the different types of creator ad spending that IAB measured were growing. So you can see that, you know, there really is this more holistic investment into creators overall. They're becoming a must buy and a core part of marketing strategies.

20:48Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, we definitely hear that a lot. And I think there's so many startups that are like, oh, but we have amazing measurement. And like they try to tell brands that. But at the end of the day, like there are not frameworks, like you said, in the same way that there is for TV. And even though, you know, traditional TV is way on the decline, marketers, I think, still feel comfortable because they're like, OK, well, I know how to measure the spend. So, yeah, what what is the solution here? Yeah, I mean, there's so many issues with influencer marketing measurement from things like vague or inconsistent metrics all the way down to sort of the infrastructure that's needed to standardize all of this.

21:25And these aren't issues that are going to be solved overnight. But one of the issues is something that a lot of brands can start to solve today, and that is that there tends to be a disconnect or a mismatch between influencer marketing goals and the success metrics that they use. I saw this time and time again in my research. It also comes up so much in my conversations with brands, and it's something that the IAB research confirmed, too. So if looking at the research, the top goals for influencer marketing were building brand awareness and reaching new audiences. Both of these are top of the funnel marketing goals.

22:01But the top two ways in which brands were measuring the success of their influencer marketing campaigns were overall ROI and engagement rates, which do not measure either of those goals. So I think the way to start solving this today is that brands really need to align their campaign goals with success metrics right up front. And of course, that can be iterated on. But making that decision ahead of time can ensure that they are measuring their influencer marketing investments in the right way. On to our final big topic. Let's talk about what happened in the podcasting world, because it feels like every day there is a new headline.

22:38And this week was no exception. Kaya, what's going on?

22:42Jasmine Enberg: So Apple released its 2025, you know, podcasting review top shows, and Joe Rogan actually unseated the daily. So he took the number one spot and then The Daily was number two. But what I thought was more interesting actually than that is that the Mel Robbins podcast took the number three spot. And if you're not familiar with her, she's like a motivational speaker, personal growth guru who has been having a banner year. And I think what's so crazy about her being in the third spot this year is that she wasn't even in the top 10 last year. And I think it's so rare, like when we talk about podcasting, we talk about the same shows over and over again, and we see the same shows continuing to be on the top charts.

23:23Jasmine Enberg: So it's honestly exciting to see people, you know, break through and find success amid a very crowded podcasting market. And I think what Mel Robbins did so well this year, she released a book. She had a live tour. She was a guest on pretty much every podcast and did a tour that way. And her book, The Let Them Theory, also became like a meme where people were sort of spoofing it a little bit. And the whole kind of concept is like encouraging, you know, people to stop trying to control others. And it's this whole concept. And people were making really funny reels about it. And it all just like added into this halo effect that obviously is directly translating to her seeing huge success in downloads of her podcast.

24:07Jasmine Enberg: So that was really interesting to see. New name. Obviously, podcasting, I think, today is super male-dominated. So exciting to see a woman, you know, break through. Here is what else is going on in the creator economy this week. Slow Ventures, which earlier this year raised a$60 million seed fund to invest directly in creators, made their latest investment into a physical therapist and creator with about 140 ,000 Instagram followers. Her name is Tayla Cannon. And I think what's so interesting about their approach to investing is they're looking at deep expertise and niches. And they're also often backing creators who have founded companies.

24:43Jasmine Enberg: so she's also the founder of an app that lets people launch and run their own virtual rehab businesses. Facebook is rolling out a new tool to help protect creators from having their work used without their permission. The tool is called Content Protection and creators who enroll in it will be notified if the program detects matches to their reels on either Facebook or on Instagram. Creators then have the choice to either track the performance of that reel to have it taken down or keep it up. What was really interesting is that on some specific reels, they can also add an original buy label that will link back to their page or to their profile.

25:22I think, you know, all of this is just so timely given the fact that creators are more concerned than ever about their content being copied now in the age of AI. But the options also clearly aren't black and white. I mean, sometimes people want their content to be remixed so that they can reach new audiences.

25:39Jasmine Enberg: Bethany Frankel is making more money from social media than in other eras of her career, which I found so interesting. She, of course, was an OG on the Bravo's Real Housewives franchise, and she sold her alcohol brand Skinny Girl for a reported$100 million in 2011. She was very early to the celebrity liquor category. And more recently, she has found huge success on TikTok and Instagram for her unfiltered opinions on everything from Chanel bags to beauty products to giving people recipes for supermodel snacks and all that stuff. So super interesting that out of all of her different career chapters, social media has been the ones bringing the most money for her.

26:20Thanks so much for listening. You can subscribe to Scalable at scalablepod.co.

26:51Jasmine Enberg: Thank you. into a habit-enhancing performance and protecting your most valuable asset, your people. Start building the stronger safety culture today at bcsp.org.