Why Creators Should Care About Meta and YouTube’s Verdict and Why Affiliate is Making a Comeback

0:00Hi, everyone. This is Scalable, a weekly show about the business of the creator economy.

0:04Jasmine Enberg: 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. It turns out Meta and YouTube are addicting. Meta and YouTube have both been found liable. Everybody's talking about what the verdict in the social media addiction trial means for Meta and YouTube's businesses. Today, we're going to break down what it means for the creator economy. We'll also dive into why affiliate marketing is so back and why Meta is making a bigger bet on edits. And finally, we'll bring you our conversation with Luka Dukic, Vice President of Content Marketing at the Chicago Bulls, which is one of the biggest NBA teams on social media.

0:40He tells us why YouTube is one of the team's top priorities.

0:48Hi, Jasmine. Hey, Kaya. And hi, everyone. This is Scalable, a weekly show about the business of the creator economy.

0:55Jasmine Enberg: I'm Kaya Uriyev. 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. As every CMO or marketer knows, scale is one of the biggest challenges when it comes to creator storytelling. That's also one reason why we named our company Scalable. This episode is made possible by Agentio, the AI native platform for creator advertising, making it truly scalable and measurable. Agentio is also the title sponsor for our upcoming Scalable Summit, which is happening on May 6th in Los Angeles. Manual sourcing, outreach, negotiation, contracting, briefing, content approval, all of that can take weeks to months to complete, even with the best tools.

1:36Jasmine Enberg: That makes it impossible to scale from 50 to 500 creators without adding in-house headcount or getting external help. Agentia's AI platform solves this challenge, reducing the end-to-end process from months or weeks to days or even hours, allowing you to launch, learn, and optimize quickly. One-person creator or growth team, no problem. Your team can manage 50 or 500 partnerships per month without adding headcount. Brands like Bombas, which I happen to be wearing right now on my feet, Maeve, Olipop, Uber, Skims, and Cash App all trust Agentio with their campaigns. Bombas saw a 5x improvement in return on ad spend and a 2x improvement in cost.

2:14Go to agentio.com to book a demo. Before we get into the creator economy's wild last week, I am so excited to air our interview with Luka Dukic from the Chicago Bulls. He spoke really candidly about how much the sports marketing playbook has changed because of social media and gave us a real look under the hood at the team's creator and YouTube strategy. You are not going to want to miss this interview. But back to all the news.

2:40Jasmine Enberg: It was a crazy week last week. So much happened that we even felt like we had to respond. and we popped in with a special Wednesday newsletter to break down the end of OpenAI's Sora, as well as the verdict in the social media addiction trial against Meta and YouTube. We say that we have a twice weekly newsletter, but at this point, it's three days a week. Yeah, please don't put that out in the world. We don't want to make that kind of a promise because it is a lot. Anyway, now that we have had a couple of days to digest all of this news, we want to take you even deeper into what all of this means for the creator economy.

3:15Jasmine Enberg: So let's start with the trial and the verdict against Meta and YouTube. Kaya, break it down. To catch you up, here's what happened. So Meta and YouTube were found liable last week in a landmark lawsuit alleging that their app designs were addictive and harmful to young users. Snap and TikTok were also named in the lawsuit, but settled before the trial began. The case centered around a now 20-year-old woman named Kaylee, whose last name was kept confidential. And she testified that social media use that started when she was just a child dominated her life for years and contributed to mental health issues from anxiety and depression to body dysmorphia.

3:51She won the case and Meta and YouTube were ordered to pay$3 million in damages of which Meta is responsible for 70%. Later, another$3 million in punitive damages was added, bringing the total to$6 million. It's one of thousands of consolidated cases against the companies, some of which could now also go to court. So we wanted to really talk about what's at stake here because it's certainly not the money because$6 million is a drop in the bucket for these companies.

4:17Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, I mean,$6 million really is a slap on the wrist for a company like Meta or YouTube. If you think back to 2025, I mean, Meta made over$200 billion in revenue that year. And that's over$22 million per hour when you average it out. So significantly more than the fines in this case. It's also worth noting, though, that a day before this verdict came out, Meta was also found liable in another case in New Mexico for, quote, misleading consumers about the safety of its platforms and endangering children. So not a very good week for Meta. The civil penalties in that case were much higher at around$375 million.

4:56Jasmine Enberg: But that is also still less than what Meta makes in a day. So really not very significant in terms of its overall business. And not surprisingly, these companies have defended themselves throughout the case in the social addiction trial against the claims, and they're going to appeal the decision. So we will see what happens with that. Yeah, and I think that takes us to, you know, why all of this really matters. I mean, first of all, I think it's important to know that these cases are different. But one of the things that they have in common is that they both allege that Meta knew about the harms, but didn't disclose it to anyone else.

5:29Jasmine Enberg: I mean, I think that was one of the keys that they knowingly designed their apps to be quote unquote, addictive in the social media addiction trial. And all of this is creating a ton of pressure for Meta as well as other social platforms to redesign their apps. And if it happens, really could mean anything from stronger age verification tools to prevent minors from joining the platform, all the way to, you know, changing their recommendation systems to make the platforms less addicting. Now, all of this is still super speculative. I mean, Kaya, you mentioned that the platforms are going to appeal and there's a lot that could still happen.

6:04Jasmine Enberg: But if it does, an app redesign would be an existential threat to the businesses of these companies. I mean, their ad businesses thrive off of engagement. They thrive off of time spent. I mean, the more time people spend on these platforms, the more opportunities they have to serve ads to users. And if any changes to the design make people spend less time on the app, the fewer opportunities they'll have to serve ads, and that could hurt their revenue. And then again, that could have a ripple effect across their entire business because they won't have as much money to spend on other things like the big bets that Meta is making in AI or in wearables, for example.

6:46Jasmine Enberg: And that's one of the big reasons why you saw CEO Mark Zuckerberg take part in this case. I mean, that is how seriously Meta really takes all of this. Yeah, Instagram head Adam Masseri also testified in that case. But let's dive deeper into that, because if Meta and YouTube have to redesign their apps, this obviously would impact creators in a big way. I mean, these platforms are the biggest within the creator economy. Obviously, creators and platforms have had a long, tenuous relationship. So if Meta and YouTube do have to do a product overhaul, how do you think that impacts the creator economy, Jasmine?

7:18Jasmine Enberg: So in the short term, it really doesn't. And a few legal experts that I spoke to right after the verdict came out said that it is very possible that if it comes down to it, Meta will just pay the fines, they'll add some additional guardrails like age verification, for example, and then things will just keep moving along the way that they always have. But I think for argument's sake, let's say that Meta does have to undergo a major product overhaul. And I know there's going to be a lot of people out there who are going to say that's never going to happen. But never say never. It is not impossible.

7:48Jasmine Enberg: We actually have some examples of similar things happening, including earlier this year when Meta actually relented to EU regulators that had ruled that it's pay or consent model in the region, which basically said users either had to pay for a subscription to use Facebook or Instagram without ads, or then they had to consent to having their personal data shared for the full experience, violated the EU's Digital Markets Act. And it was ordered to pay about 200 million euros. And then it was also subject to daily fines for continued violations. Now, without going into the whole history of this case, in January, Meta actually changed the offer to EU users to three choices.

8:28Jasmine Enberg: So you could have the usual experience with ads and sharing data, or you could share less personal data for fewer personalized ads, or you could pay for an ad-free service. Now, obviously, this case is very, very different than what's happening here in the US. And I think the daily fines or the potential for daily fines was a big factor in all of this. But it does still clearly show that Meta isn't immune to this pressure or being forced to change some of its services, even if it could hurt its bottom line. Right. And I mean, the more people who opt into sharing less personal data for fewer ads could mean less ad revenue, which is really what all these cases boil down to for Meta.

9:07Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, I mean, it's always about the money, right? And so in these cases from last week in the US, say Meta has to make changes to its algorithm, for example, that might make it safer for younger users or quote unquote, less addictive, that could impact creators and how they distribute and make money off of their content on those platforms. Obviously, this isn't entirely new for creators, right? We see this all the time. The platforms are constantly changing or tweaking their algorithm or their features, and that affects how creators show up there. But I do think this could take it to a whole new level if you now have regulators being the ones determining what those changes might have to be.

9:46And like we reported late last year, Instagram Reels is really good now. And a lot of that has to do with the changes that Meta made to its algorithm to help promote content from smaller accounts and just be better at serving relevant content to relevant users. So in that case, I mean, those changes were actually really good for a lot of creators who are struggling to get views on Instagram or grow on Instagram. But a lot of the times the incentives between the creators and platforms are not aligned and creators have started being more outspoken about this. Just a few weeks ago, Matt Reif, a standup comedian with 20 million TikTok followers, who has also sparked controversy at times for offensive jokes, had this to say.

10:23I hate TikTok. It's the most poisonous thing on earth right now. When it was about to get banned in America, I was stoked. You're like, yes! I was so excited, man. Because it's also, it's unreliable. Right. Like, I built an audience of, I think I'm at like 20 million followers or like 19.7 or some shit. So, I mean, I was getting to a point where I was getting a million views an hour on there as soon as I posted a video. It was an explosion of exposure on there. and then little by little it started to go away a little bit a little bit a little bit a little bit which i'm like that's fine you're only something new and fancy for a little while and then after about a year and a half went by um they just completely dropped off i couldn't reach any of my followers for some reason so i started hitting up tiktok like you know they can find you a representative that works over there and everything and they told me to my face on zoom they were like yeah we just don't push stand-up anymore i was like okay so i have 20 million followers who want to see what I'm posting and you won't let them see it and they're like yeah we just we only push the the trends that are current right now and they said stand-up comedy was a trend on our platform but you kind of helped spearhead quite a bit but they were like it went on for much longer than it should have most trends only last like a month or two and uh yeah now we just don't push stand-up as a platform and they were like you know good luck and I was like well how am I supposed to like so what am I doing what am I doing the 20 million followers that I got yeah so what I said how am I supposed to reach it?

11:46What do you suggest? They said, maybe just do the trends. Like, you know, if there's a new dance people are doing or whatever. So he's giving his view on TikTok, not meta, but it speaks to something we've been following this year, too. I mean, as meta pushes more reels, the same thing is happening, right? Creators have less control than ever over who sees their content and followers just don't mean what they used to mean. I mean, this has so many ramifications for creators from if they can even build a true audience on these platforms to whether they can make money from their content. You know, we live in a time today where someone with 20 ,000 followers may actually make more money than someone with 1 million followers.

12:21You know, there are creators that I see on my For You page or on my Reels feed who I tap follow and I might never see their content again, or I might see it once in a while. I mean, it didn't used to be that way on social media. And I remember I did this story back in 2021, which I have to say was quite prescient and early because I think now we're only really realizing the extent of it. But the headline was the million follower factory TikTok is making everyone famous, but few creators are cashing in. And it was all about how TikTok fame is so fleeting. And it's really only gotten worse since then.

12:53And I have to shout out Brendan Cahan, who I quoted for that piece, who now runs a LinkedIn influencer marketing agency. But he put it to me this way, that TikTok unleashed inflation into the creator economy. And it's so true and even worse now than it was in 2021. I mean, a creator may have 5 million on TikTok, and then they might have 100K on Instagram and 35K on YouTube. And guess which of those audiences is more valuable? Probably the YouTube one, right? And I think that's a big part of why YouTube has been able to maintain its place as kind of the gold standard, because often you're going to YouTube to search for something or someone.

13:29I mean, shorts has changed that equation a little bit. But for long form, it remains true. And I think if these verdicts to bring it back to the point, sorry, I went on a little tangent there with the followers, but to bring it back to the point, the verdicts, you know, if they bring more algorithmic changes, then that leaves creators even more vulnerable and gives them even more whiplash and just makes their businesses that much more vulnerable. Yeah.

13:52Jasmine Enberg: And I think, you know, like we see so many times with so many different things within the creator economy, like the algorithm really has been a double edged sword for creators, right? Like on the one hand, it can help them to get discovered. It can also help them build an audience really quickly. But it also means that they might need to play to the algorithm to create content in order to get the views that they need instead of making the content that they want to create. And they also don't always know who's actually watching their videos, right? Or what drew them to it in the first place. And we've heard time and again, to your point that, you know, followers aren't necessarily even seeing videos.

14:27Jasmine Enberg: I know even in our experience, looking at our Instagram account, a lot of our views come from non-followers. So this is something that's happening really kind of across the board. And it was actually Danny Frankel, who is a former Facebook executive and now the CEO of Punch Up Live, which is a platform for comedy who actually pointed this video of Matt Reif out to us. And what Frankel told us when we talked is that all of what's happening right now with Meta, with YouTube, really should be a wake-up call to creators about how little control they have over their audiences, over distribution, and over their income, right?

15:03Jasmine Enberg: And how there are these external forces, regulation included, that can have a serious impact on their businesses, on their livelihoods. Now, of course, Frenkel is building his business on this premise, but he also has a lot of firsthand knowledge into how Meta operates after having been there for so long. And all of that said, he also did agree with us that at this moment, this verdict really doesn't change much for creators, that they should not necessarily be doing anything differently, and that there isn't really even a reason to think that these verdicts would, quote, dramatically change the algorithmic underpinnings of any of these social platforms.

15:43Jasmine Enberg: But there was one question that he posed during our call that I found super interesting, and it was this. Could these lawsuits open up liability for social platforms in terms of the content that they host? And that, I think, would be something that would be really game-changing. Yes. For those of you who are not familiar, the social platforms are protected by Section 230, which was passed 30 years ago to help then the fledgling internet industry grow. And what it says is that social platforms aren't publishers of the content on their platform, so they can't be held liable for what people post.

16:16And this has been so hugely important for all the platforms, and it's also why all of them can have different content moderation guidelines and systems.

16:25Jasmine Enberg: Yeah. And I mean, I feel like it's a stretch, right? It's already taken us over a decade to get where we are today since the first reports of potential harm to young people on social media started coming out. There is a reason why these lawsuits that we saw last week really went after the platform design rather than the content itself. I mean, Section 230, Kaya, to your point, is incredibly strong. It has withstood so many different tests. I mean, there's been many attempts to either change or overhaul it. And I'm not sure that either of these cases would have been as successful if, you know, they had taken a different approach than the one that they did.

17:04Jasmine Enberg: That said, it does kind of feel like we are at this turning point, right? And you can even see that in the way that a lot of these social platforms are responding. Like, look at Instagram's new Europe algorithm, which basically lets people pick and choose what they see on the platform. And yes, of course, that is a way to give people more control over what they see, which is a direct response to a lot of the trends we're hearing, which is that people want to feel good about the time that they're spending online and they want to, you know, be able to choose what content they're watching versus having it just be served to them.

17:37Jasmine Enberg: But I also think it gives meta, you know, an extra layer of separation, right? And protection when you have people who are self-selecting the content versus having it served to them. And if you think about this kind of in the broader context of everything else that's going on. Yeah, I mean, 100%. And for creators, it just means the responsibilities on them for the content they produce. And that also goes for the way that they run their businesses. I mean, how many kind of wake up calls have we had the TikTok ban? I mean, TikTok went offline for, you know, 12 hours or however long it was. And there have been so many of these moments.

18:10I mean, even remember when Meta's apps went offline, just because of a, you know, technical issue for hours also, and creators who had most of their following on Instagram, we're like, oh, wow, like this really can disappear overnight. So I think the lesson here is really diversify, diversify, diversify their business temporarily, right?

18:29Jasmine Enberg: Even if it doesn't disappear, like imagine one of these platforms goes offline for however long, and you have a brand deal you need to fulfill, it has a direct impact. And I think if you think about this in a more global context, it's also worth pointing out that this isn't just a threat in the US. I mean, you mentioned, I think the EU obviously is known for being tougher on regulation, especially with tech platforms. But the EU told TikTok in February that it has to change features such as its never-ending infinite scroll and how it recommends content to users or face big fines. So this is a preliminary ruling.

19:02So TikTok now, you know, has the opportunity to defend itself, but they could face fines of up to 6 % of annual revenue. So this is a very real threat. And we will certainly be watching to see how all of this unfolds.

19:14Jasmine Enberg: Moving on to our next story, it feels like we have been talking a lot about creator shopping lately, but we are not stopping that today because affiliate marketing apparently is so back. Yes. And after abandoning so many of its commerce efforts, it seems like Meta has decided it's time to get back in the game. So it recently announced that Instagram creators can now tag up to 30 products in a reel and earn commissions via affiliate links. 30 products in one reel makes my head crazy. Meanwhile, over on Facebook, creators can connect their accounts to affiliate program partners like Amazon, eBay, Timu and tag products directly in posts and reels to earn a commission.

19:57Notably, what we thought was so interesting about this is that users make the purchase on the partner app. So they're checking out on Amazon, not on Facebook. And then YouTube not to be left out last week also expanded access to its affiliate program to all creators in the YouTube Partner Program who have at least 500 subscribers.

20:12Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, I mean, there was a flurry of affiliate activity. And these features like affiliate marketing in general really are geared towards small and midsize creators. That's very different from Meta's other creator monetization tools that it announced a couple of weeks ago, like Creator Fast Track on Facebook, which we also covered in a previous podcast. Those are geared much more towards larger creators, especially those on other platforms. And small and mid-sized creators have really have recently become very popular partners for brands, especially for things like product reviews and recommendations, or during really big sales periods when they need to get a lot of content out and do so really quickly.

20:54Jasmine Enberg: I think one of the big challenges for brands when they're working with a lot of small and mid-sized creators is managing all of these partners all at once. And affiliate marketing has kind of served as a way for them to have this low lift, always on tool to drive direct sales, and also to be able to attribute those sales better, right. And that has been something that's been long challenging within influencer marketing is now getting even harder with the rise of AI. Obviously, we're being a little cheeky affiliate, of course, never totally went away. Lots of retailers from Walmart to Amazon have long had their own affiliate programs for creators without pulling them back, unlike Meta.

21:31And then of course, there's TikTok, there's LTK, there's ShopMy. But I think it's worth diving into how these are all very different types of affiliate programs. So if you look at the LTKs and the ShopMys of the world, this is a much more curated experience. Often you're landing on someone's LTK or ShopMy because you follow them on social media. You trust their recommendations. You want to buy something that they were wearing in a post on social media. LTK now is rolling out more, you know, social features in its app and it's becoming more social like and hoping kind of you will discover people on LTK's app, not just via social.

22:06But nevertheless, it is a much more curated experience. TikTok, on the other hand, with TikTok Shop is flooding the zone with trending content. You know, when I've talked to TikTok Shop creators over the years, I mean, they are scouring the platform for what's trending and making videos of that and getting a sample. I mean, perfect example, this selfie light that I use to record this podcast, honestly, one of the best purchases I've made from TikTok shop, and way better than more expensive lighting kits that I've tried. I think this was like under$10. I saw it probably 15 times before I bought it.

22:39And it was like the selfie light, you know, era. And the creator who I bought it from was the lucky winner and got the credit. But did you buy it on TikTok?

22:47Jasmine Enberg: Or did you go somewhere else to buy? I checked out on TikTok shop and I bought it. But that's really how it works. It's like you see something over and over again on your feed. And so on TikTok, unlike LTK or ShopMy, like, I don't even know who the creator I purchased it from was, right? Like, me and other people will purchase items from a creator we've never even seen before, or may never see again to my earlier point on the follower counts. But you know, regardless of these two approaches, both of them offer brands an easier way to manage affiliate partners at scale and also centralize their efforts.

23:17Jasmine Enberg: So I got sucked into the Metacube trend on TikTok. Have you seen those? It's a Korean skincare brand and I got served it so many times that finally I had to give it a shot. But I didn't buy it on TikTok shop. I actually went to Amazon and bought it afterwards because I did my own price research and ended up being, if not cheaper, at least the same price on Amazon, but easier because I didn't have to fill in any of my information and I could just use Amazon Prime. But anyway, back to what we're really talking about. The way that I think about LTK versus TikTok is this. LTK gave affiliate a glow up and TikTok really put it on steroids.

23:53Jasmine Enberg: So I think that's the kind of nice way to sum up the differences between the two. But I think what's really interesting is, you know, why Meta is doing this now. I mean, to your point, Kaya, it feels like the company is finally starting to get back into the commerce game after abandoning so many of its tools. And I suspect that this is likely just the beginning of, you know, the features that it's going to start rolling out. And last year, I said that Meta could even bring back live shopping. You know, it didn't happen, but maybe I was just too early. And I don't know if it'll be exactly that, but I'm certainly expecting to see, you know, more commerce tools coming out of Meta and social platforms.

24:31Jasmine Enberg: One of the reasons for this is that the moment is different now than it was back in 2022 when it was getting rid of a lot of those social commerce tools. And Meta also has all of the learnings from its previous commerce push. Like if you take the affiliate program as an example, it lets the company drive more shopping on its platforms without having to fully host the experience, meaning, you know, hosting everything from discovery to checkout to delivery themselves. And that, Kaya, like you said, is being handled by the affiliate partner, which could be Amazon, eBay, or any of the other partners that they're working with.

25:03Jasmine Enberg: And that makes sense because Meta has learned over the years that a lot of people don't want to buy directly on their platforms. I mean, most of the time people are clicking through on an ad or they're clicking through on a piece of creator content and then checking out of the retailer because, you know, like me and what I just said about Amazon, they might have their details already filled in there or they trust it more or they want to know who to call in case something goes wrong with the order. It also, though, makes me wonder whatever happened to the partnership that Meta struck with Amazon back in 2023.

25:35Jasmine Enberg: Do you remember, Kaya? No, I actually don't. Basically, what happened was is Meta and Amazon struck a partnership where it would let users buy via Amazon ads on Meta without actually ever leaving the app. And so we really haven't heard much about it, which to me says it probably didn't live up to the hype. But it was a really big moment to kind of see these walled gardens, these massive companies really kind of let their walls down and partner with each other, right? And this feels like it's a continuation of that, meaning the affiliate program, especially if you combine it with some of the other announcements that Meta made alongside the affiliate program, which is like more ways for retail media networks, meaning companies like Amazon to promote their products through Facebook.

26:20I mean, this affiliate program also might not live up to the hype or might not last, right? And I think creators are right to be skeptical. I mean, in 2022, Meta shut down its affiliate marketing program on Instagram. And most recently, they created quite a stir over at Instagram with the new shop the look button that added AI generated recommendations to content without their consent and without paying them or sharing any of the revenue. Last month, Instagram told us it was a limited test and would take feedback from creators before rolling it out more broadly. That seems like a good idea. But a lot of backlash to that test.

26:53And yeah, they were big mad.

26:55Jasmine Enberg: Big mad is right. And it's not just that they weren't earning from the products that they recommended. In some cases, what we saw is that those AI generated recommendations were actually different from the products that the creator was featuring in their posts, right? And that could hurt their reputation if those products aren't up to quality or worse. What if the AI recommended a competitive product in a post that was part of a brand deal, for example, and that would then hurt the relationship that the creator would have with that brand. So it had all sorts of issues and ripple effects across creators.

27:34Jasmine Enberg: So no surprise that they were not happy about this. Yes. And if you think about that commerce push versus this commerce push, a big differentiator is AI and how it's reshaping the shopping journey. These chatbots have become big competitors to Meta and social commerce because they both help people discover new products. So, you know, AI, obviously, not surprisingly, was a big theme at ShopTalk, the annual retail conference in Las Vegas, where Meta made the announcement, plus several others related to AI, like more product info on ads. but we decided to pick one announcement that we found super interesting because there was just a flurry of them so we wanted to go deeper on one but magic links which is a creator commerce company that's been around for a decade and focuses on youtube launched ai shelf which is a tool that helps brands better show up in ai search results so basically how it works is it analyzes creators youtube videos that include sponsorships with brands they look at things like video titles transcriptions to assess how the brand's products appear in AI-generated answers.

28:33We spoke to Magic Link's co-founder, Jennifer Pina, about it, and we were really fascinated by this feature. And I think this launch comes at a time when, like we said, more people are turning to AI chatbots for product recommendations. And also as YouTube has become the top source cited by large language models.

28:51Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, so I think we're at a point now where every brand has a pretty good sense of how often they're showing up in LOM results. I also think that most brands are pretty unhappy with it, but a lot of them either don't know what to do about it or it just feels like an enormous undertaking and they don't even know where to start. Like AI really is this huge structural shift for a lot of brands. In fact, the way that the creator economy was and still is, I suppose. And they need to be optimizing their content for visibility in LLMs instead of in Google, which is something that they have been doing for years now.

29:28Jasmine Enberg: And that could mean, you know, sometimes overhauling their entire strategy and how they show up online. It's not just about keywords anymore. Like what they really need to be thinking about is credibility as well as things like newness and structuring content in a way that's easy for AI to read. And I think it's that last part where Magic Links will hopefully really be able to shine for a lot of the brands that it works with, because it's really looking at how these videos are structured, including things like chapter titles, which you mentioned, Kaya, to understand, you know, what is performing and also, you know, what signals are actually leading consumers to make a purchase based off that content.

30:08Jasmine Enberg: I think overall, too, you know, creators are just going to be a much bigger part of AI strategy for brands than we probably previously thought, right? And I keep going back to, you know, a conversation I heard at the IAB in February where one of the executives from Mondelez was on stage and she said that Oreo, which is the world's most popular cookie brand based on sales, was only showing up in LLM results about 10 % of the time, including to questions like, you know, what's the best cookie to have at a kid's birthday party? And you would expect kind of based on the sales figures and the brand recognition that it would be the first thing that would pop up.

30:45Jasmine Enberg: And a big part of how she said they were thinking about sort of improving their visibility and discovery was by leaning into YouTube. Again, kind of like you said, it's the number one most cited source from LLMs, as well as platforms like Reddit, which rely on user generated content in order to make sure that they're showing up there. So creators obviously are a huge part of YouTube. They're creating a lot of content around brands and products. Yeah, I mean, the Oreo example is a great one. I think about that one a lot and I wasn't even there, but I just think it shows, right? These incumbents cannot be comfortable in this new moment.

31:23I think the challenge for brands like the Oreos and Mondelezas of the world and for Magic Links is how quickly AI is moving. So they're also, I mean, with this feature and just in general, they're going to have to stay on top of how the LLMs are evolving and keep the feature relevant as well.

31:38Jasmine Enberg: Yeah. And I also hope that there's a two-way street with the data, right? I mean, when we talk to Magic Links, they did tell us that they're training their own creators on the tool. But if the brands that they're working with who are using this, right, aren't communicating directly with creators about how to improve their content, then we kind of risk falling into the same trap that we have with brand partnerships overall. all. And I go back to this data point that I think came out early last year from Creator Vision, which is that 85 % of creators never hear feedback from brands about how they evaluate their content or what they think of the work.

32:10Jasmine Enberg: And creators can't make better content for brands if they don't know what they were doing wrong or right. Oh, yeah. 1000%. Moving on to our last story, before we take you to our interview, diving into the social media strategy behind the Chicago So we broke in our newsletter earlier this week that Edits, which is Meta's video editing app, has a new leader. Brett Westerfelt is the new head of Edits. Brett is a Meta veteran. He spent more than eight years at Instagram, most recently as the head of design. And before that, he was a product designer at Facebook for nearly four years. So to take you back to a moment, all the way back to January 2025, which somehow was only a year and a half ago-ish, right?

32:50Jasmine Enberg: No, not even. when I was fact checking that I was like was that January 2025 that's impossible that was a year and a year ago that's how I know it feels like time is moving both incredibly quickly and so slowly sometimes but anyway in January 2025 Meta announced that edits was coming it also allowed people to sign up in advance of the launch that was a time when TikTok as well as its other apps, including CapCut, which is a major edits competitor, were under serious threat of a ban and also disappeared for a bit. And CapCut was actually down for a lot longer than TikTok was, because obviously getting TikTok up was the main priority for the company.

33:33Yeah. And we learned from Brett that, you know, Instagram had been weighing a CapCut competitor for a while before that, you know, back to the summer of 2024. And Brett was on the founding team of edits. You know, and I think from the outside, a lot of people at the time, myself included, were like, Meta should have had edits ready to launch in January 2025 to fill the CapCut void rather than just, you know, announcing it. But let's also remember that no one was 100 % convinced that TikTok or CapCut would actually go offline. And there was just so much back and forth with it. So I you know, I understand in retrospect, but our conversation with Brett got to the bottom of that because he told us that, you know, edits just truly wasn't ready in January 2025.

34:12And there was obviously so much urgency internally due to the band situation. But at the same time, the meta team did not want to put something out that they weren't proud of. So pre announcing the app was this compromise that gave them the ability to, you know, communicate to creators that help was on the way, but without rolling out a half baked product.

34:30Jasmine Enberg: Yeah. And I mean, think back to threads, right? I mean, they launched right after I believe it was the rebrand of Twitter to X and like really came out and there was a lot of complaints because it did feel like the app wasn't completely ready, right? And so people were complaining about the algorithm. It was also missing some features like DMs, for example. It did feel like it was this big moment, right? And they definitely wanted to capitalize on all the turmoil that was happening at X. But it did feel like, you know, there were parts of the app that really weren't fully baked. So maybe they took some lessons from that too, especially for an editing app where, you know, it has to be working properly in order for people to be able to use it.

35:09Yes. And look, at that time, they were firing on all cylinders. They were bringing back the reels bonuses. So it wasn't just the CapCut edit move. This was part of a bigger strategy. But edits officially launched in April 2025. But by then, CapCut was back. So I do wonder if they had rolled something out a little sooner, if they could have capitalized a little more. But I have been shocked because I'm on the press list for edits features. And they literally have been adding new features almost every week, if not every week. And multiple features every week. multiple, multiple features. So I think that's definitely helped them generate a lot of momentum.

35:40I also think another smart thing they did was the made with edits tag on videos, which helps kind of spread the word among creators, just like TikTok's watermark did in the early days. And we're seeing some of that momentum show up in the data. Of course, they would not tell us, you know, daily active users or anything like that. But they did say that during the fourth quarter, 10 % of the reels people viewed each day were created with edits, which is almost triple from the previous quarter.

36:03Jasmine Enberg: It's a really good sign, right, that growth figure. But I will say that CapCut is still the second biggest Gen AI app worldwide after ChatGPT. And this is looking at all Gen AI apps across the board. And that's according to January rankings from Sensor Tower. Though, we also have to say that some of the Edits tools are integrated into the main Instagram app. So there's probably a lot more people who are actually using those tools than those figures might imply. But either way, Edits has a lot of catching up to do to the likes of CapCut. And Brett kind of walked us through some of the things that it's doing to help it to stand out and also to keep up.

36:40Jasmine Enberg: So first, Meta wants to make Edits simple to use compared to some of its other competitors that either feel super complicated or, you know, have a desktop app basically squeezed into a mobile app, which isn't a great user experience. And another big edge that I think Meta has is being able to offer its features for free. And I think this is, you know, Meta's long standing playbook. They build an audience first, and then they bring on monetization later. And I brought up threads before we saw a similar thing happen there. And Brett didn't give us all that much insight into if or when edits would add paid features, but he did use the opportunity to take a little bit of a swipe at CapCut.

37:20Jasmine Enberg: So you can see that they really do view that as their competitor as well. And he said that CapCut now at quote, every corner seems to have a pop-up encouraging users to subscribe and pay for the services. And I have to say, as somebody who has been learning both CapCut and Edit simultaneously, I can confirm that the paywall on CapCut is incredibly frustrating, but neither of these apps has been easy for me to use. One edge that I will say that I think Edit has on CapCut is the music. And I need to dig deeper into this in terms of whether I'm just doing something wrong or if this is actually a real thing.

37:55Jasmine Enberg: But I find that the music selection on edits is much broader and more up to date than on CapCut. But I do find CapCut easier overall because it has so many different templates. And I really need those because I am by no means a pro at making reels or TikToks. And what I have been doing is kind of fudging it a little bit. And Kaya, I don't know if I've actually ever even told you this when I've been like trying to edit our videos is I'll edit the full video in CapCut using one of the templates, but then I won't be able to find music that I like. So I will download that video, re-upload it into edits and add music to it.

38:31Jasmine Enberg: And then the problem becomes that sometimes the music doesn't match the actual template. And then I'm like, I don't know what to do anymore. So it has been, it is, it is certainly challenging. Well, okay. First of all, thanks for that you were taking this on because I haven't tried to properly edit a video since Final Cut Pro days in J school. So oh my god, I haven't heard that brand name in so long. I had such a love hate relationship with Final Cut Pro too. I had a whole Final Cut Pro class, but I would have to dust off that knowledge. But I did actually speak earlier today with a edits power user because edits has also done a smart thing where they have formed this council of creators who is giving them feedback on the platform and the features they want and the bugs and all this stuff.

39:15So I spoke to RV Mendoza, who is a very funny creator who has been working closely with the edits team. RV has this running series about Costco. So go check that out. I went into a rabbit hole, but side note, but I think one thing that edits has done really smartly is bringing creators into the process early on getting their feedback, they have a WhatsApp group where they're giving feedback, they brought them to Los Angeles to Meta's office as well to kind of give that in-person feedback. So that is definitely something at least the creators who are involved with that are appreciating at this stage.

39:46And this creator also pointed to the music. One thing that is very interesting about this is each app obviously has different music licensing deals. So one thing that this creator pointed out that is a win is that you can remove music before exporting. So for example, if there's music within edit, they can then take out the music and then be able to upload it to TikTok and then choose music that is available on TikTok. So it's like these little things that feel like so in the weeds, but are hugely important to creators and respectfully to the Instagram designers and engineers, like how would they know that without talking to creators?

40:24So I do think it's smart that they are, you know, bringing in creators to this feedback loop. And this creator actually initially got connected with the team because they were responding on threads about edits. So there you go. Love seeing the whole ecosystem work together. But while Meta isn't focused on making money from edits now, it is likely that it will try to in the future. And that could very well be through paywalls. So when we pressed Brett about this a little more, he said that the most likely is that they might charge for cost intensive features. So let's think like, you know, AI generating features, stuff like that, that does cost meta a lot of money.

41:02But I mean, I cannot imagine that we'll see paywalls anytime soon on edits. That being said, we still have lots of questions about edits. You know, how does it fit in with Instagram's new smart TV app, for example? You know, Brett said he would like it to be possible to edit longer form videos on edits in the future. But sounds like that isn't going to happen in the immediate term. And I think for those creators who are really producing long form, they need to use a computer. So maybe there is a desktop edits app in the future.

41:29Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, it was really interesting to me too, in the conversation with Brett is that he positioned edits like a studio. And he said that quite a few times. And do you remember when we were talking about Instagram's TV app and talking about whether or not these studios or agencies would have to arise to kind of support long form video on Instagram, because they were moving on to TVs like that just kind of made me think of that whole conversation, conversation. And maybe it's not a physical studio, but it is, you know, this, this app that they're they're developing. I think the other question we have, and that I've been thinking a lot about is how does edits fit in with Meta's broader priorities and business.

42:04Jasmine Enberg: And right now, of course, you know, it's, it's indirect as the theory goes, the more creators who use edits, the more creators will post on Instagram and more creators posting more content obviously means more opportunities to serve ads, which means more revenue for Meta. And again, you know, that's one of the reasons why we see edits and Instagram being so interconnected. And again, that's classic meta. I mean, I don't want to bring threads up a million times during this conversation, but when they launched, it was connected to your Instagram account and that was to help easily onboard people onto this new app.

42:35Jasmine Enberg: But obviously if Edit starts bringing on paid tools at whatever point in the future, that will be a direct business line though. In the grand scheme of things, a meta's business, I highly doubt it will be really a meaningful amount of money, at least not anytime soon. All right. Now we are excited for you to hear our interview with Luka Dukic from the Chicago Bulls. Hi, Luka. Welcome to Scalable. Hi, guys. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for joining us. And where are you? You're in an amazing setup, which looks better than our setup. I know. I was going to say you're showing us up today.

43:07This was total kismet. I'm helping a friend out with some classes at the University of Iowa, and they happen to have a podcast studio on campus. So the next generation of podcasters are already in training and I get to borrow their studio for my appearance on Scalable. So I'm excited.

43:22Jasmine Enberg: It was meant to be. We're so excited to have you join us. But before we get into it, because I think I'm at least very curious, were you a Chicago Bulls fan before you joined the company? I was. Yeah, I'm Serbian. I was born in Serbia. Basketball is like a huge thing in our culture. So I grew up watching basketball with my family. my mom would sit and watch basketball games with my friends and I. And I grew up in the Chicago suburbs. So definitely a big Bulls fan and totally a dream job. And you've been there for what, 12 years now? Yeah, 11 years, which is crazy. It's been crazy to see because that kind of coincided with the rise of content and content marketing being such a focus.

44:05So I've been fortunate in the timing to be able to kind of see the growth of that and the evolution of how you reach people.

44:11Jasmine Enberg: So tell us a little bit about that, because I was doing a little research on LinkedIn before our conversation, and it looks like you've been working on the content side of things since at least about 2015. And if you kind of think back to that time period, I mean, that's when brands were trying to go viral on Facebook. TikTok didn't even exist then. People weren't really talking about creators. And I think for a lot of companies, influencer marketing even was sort of, you know, at best an afterthought. So what have been some of the biggest shifts and evolutions that you've seen over your time there?

44:41It's been a massive evolution and shift. Before I was at the Bulls, I worked for Edelman, and I worked for their sports and entertainment marketing team. My role there started off as being very, like, PR-focused, and I started to see the brands that we worked with get interested in content marketing during my five years there. So the North Face and Heineken in particular were two brands that the concept of, like, we want to make a video that people will then share, and that's going to get our brand in other people's hands, was so novel then. That's, like, the entire concept of TikTok, is you make a video that you want people to share, and so people see it.

45:14And so it's kind of funny to think about early 2010s, like making a surprise and delight video with that concept being innovative, but it really was. And so when I heard about the role at the Bulls, it was a digital content manager role. I was the first person with that title ever at the Bulls. The Bulls are one of the most followed sports brands in the world. They're the third most followed North American sports team. A lot of that credit goes to Michael Jordan and the 90s Bulls for making it an international global brand. I can't take credit for that, but that's a huge platform, right? That's like an enormous amount of people that you can reach.

45:43So it was really exciting to kind of come in there and be able to sort of like build a process. When I started at the Bulls, there was three people on the digital team kind of managing the social platforms and digital platforms. And afterthought is a strong word, but it definitely was just like one small team in the wider ecosystem of the Bulls. The content team at the Bulls now 11 years later is 30 people. It's the largest individual team at the Bulls. We have two people focused only on influencer marketing. We have people who are specialized in Benny the Bull content. We have, you know, a video team of 10.

46:15It's a real part of our business. Three people focused on digital partnerships, a person thinking about and managing agencies with content in Spanish, French and Mandarin, you know, like it's like the scope is really, really crazy. Yeah, I mean, related to that, I mean, sports isn't really about the game anymore, right? People are watching sports adjacent content from creators and other digital sports channels. You know, on one hand, that offers huge opportunities to sports teams. But are you also worried about kind of diluting your brand or other properties? I think leagues have evolved a lot where now they're giving creators some access to footage.

46:48But like, how do you balance kind of some of the pros and cons that come with sports going on TV? you have to embrace change like the it's not just the sports thing the way that people consume content is is different now right like when i was growing up i had tv and if i was on the internet in the early days no one could call the house phone you know what i mean like it's like you had like a limited amount of content options and now you have infinite content options on your phone on your tv like whatever you want to do like it's like people people can choose their own adventure like every single night, right?

47:19And everyone is doing it so differently. I think you'd be remiss not to embrace that. Like it's not a monoculture anymore. Like at the end of the day, we're a basketball team, right? Like our core content product is the games. That's always going to be super important. But not everybody sits down and watches two and a half hour games anymore, right? Like I think Adam Silver, the commissioner of the league, has kind of hinted at this. Like people consume content in different ways. Like some people follow and follow highlights or listen to podcasts. some people have their creators that they kind of focus on and follow.

47:49Like everyone is consuming content. It's just done in a different way. There's not like that monoculture anymore. And I think if teams focus only on the games, you're missing out on a lot of people and the time that they're spending interacting with content. Also say sports is cyclical and you can't control the product on the court in terms of how good the team is, right? The Bulls are definitely in a down period in terms of winning and losing. and with that if all you're offering is the game you're going to like lose relevancy and and have a hard time keeping people engaged so you need to find other ways to storytell and keep people engaged it's been cool when you kind of like break down the numbers we see in social media so many numbers that they can kind of like blur together and like become meaningless after a while but if you really take a step back and you say like hey like these tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of millions of people watch this video engaged with this graphic like whatever it might be like that's them spending time with the brand, even if they didn't watch the game last night.

48:44I think there's like been a realization across sports that this is the way that you reach people. This is the way that you spend time with them and you have to get creative with it. And you have to play like with how the industry is going. Like people have different ways of consuming things. Nobody consumes everything in the same way and you have to diversify yourself as well.

49:01Jasmine Enberg: That was so interesting because it's one of the things that, you know, I talked about on stage with Jesser's president, Zach Miller at the IAB conference where Luca, you and I actually first met and he was talking about, you know, exactly that, that people are engaging with sports content in so many different ways. And the creators, of course, are playing such a huge role in that. I mean, Jester is one of the biggest basketball creators out there and you actually just had a partnership with him. So tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, that was amazing. And how great of a coincidence, not just that I'm in a podcast and you're talking to you, but that we met as you were doing a panel with Jester's business manager.

49:35Jasmine Enberg: Like I said, it was meant to be. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. So a couple of weeks ago, we did an activation with Jester. It was his first activation with the team. So for those who don't know, Jester is a basketball content creator, I would call him, though expanding it beyond basketball as well. He has 37 million YouTube subscribers. Like he is a monster star in the creator space, right? And that's people who are super dedicated, who want to engage with Jester's content, who get excited when they see him doing things. That's a real audience. That's a real audience that cares about basketball. that's a real audience that's interested in just serve.

50:08And it's not your typical audience, right? It's maybe not the people who have league pass or are watching the Bulls every night, but like it is a basketball interested audience that it's important for people to focus on. It is that next generation. It's a young audience. It's what's coming next, right? When you think about reaching youth, reaching the young people, like making sure brands stay relevant as generations change and grow up, like that's the next generation. And so we think it's important to reach out to them and engage with them on their terms and kind of play in that space. but we want to do it in a smart way.

50:37Like you don't ever want to be a brand that's kind of showing up just because there's an audience without like a plan. Or we have a creator marketing team at the Bulls, Camille and Sophia, who are two of the best in the entire business at their jobs. And, you know, they think like year round about what is our strategy? How are we working with creators? Which creators are we working with? How is this going to come to life? And Jester has long felt like, you know, the perfect partner for us, both from an audience perspective, but also like the type of content he created and the vibes. So we worked with him and the whole Bucket Squad team on coming up with a plan where he took over a Bulls game.

51:10It was one of our Bulls Kid Nation-themed games, so we knew there'd be a lot of families, a lot of young people in the crowd that day, and essentially had a Jesser weekend at the Bulls. He came to the practice facility on Saturday. He met with two of our young rising stars, Josh Giddey and Matas Buzelas. They hung out. One of my favorite clips that we caught was they were talking and hanging out, and Jesser asked Matas if he could do his celebration after he hit a shot in the game the next day, and then Modest did it. He did the Jester celebration in the game. So you even involved your players, right?

51:39Jasmine Enberg: I was going to ask, I mean, how did the players receive this too? Because I feel like creators have become sort of celebrities in their own right now too. And I imagine that, you know, a lot of the players are aware of or follow Jester as well. Yeah, for sure. But like the players are getting younger, you know? Modest is like 21 years old. Like he's like in that generation. And I think like they understand it. Like players get it. It's funny, you asked earlier about the big difference from 11 years ago. 11 years ago, you had to convince players like why they would be doing this, you know, like you're like, why do I want to like make a video for Facebook or Twitter at the time?

52:11Like and now they're coming in and a lot of them have their own platforms, right? Like they like get it. They grew up with this. They understand it. It's a huge difference. I think they were familiar with Jester and when they were excited to meet him, they understood his audience. It was really cool. And if you watched like the clip of them kind of interacting, they're genuinely like stoked to meet him, you know, like it's like genuinely like a moment. And then on the day of the game, we had a pregame atrium party. Jesser interacted with kids who are in our like youth hoops program. You know, he did a meet and greet to see the reaction people have in person with Jesser.

52:40You know, I was I was talking with my colleague about this. It's such an encapsulation of like where content culture is today because Jesser to some of to a certain age group and some of these kids at this game was like a demigod. He was like seeing like the most famous, you know what I mean? Like there was kids in tears because they were meeting Jesser. And then there was like this like group of like, you know, 30 plus folks who had no idea who Jester was. He just like walked by them and they had no idea. And I just wonder if it's the first time in history you can have someone who's that well known and famous to a very specific segment and completely unknown to a different like age group, right?

53:19And I think that's an encapsulation of what content is today. For some people, Jester is the centerpiece of their content diet and what they think about. And for other people, Jester never comes across their timeline, right? And I think that's so interesting because I think it's a reflection of where we are going as a society. And I think it shows you that like people are choosing like what they're going to engage with. And you need to be smart about, you know, how you kind of show up for those people. So, but yeah, Jester was amazing. He was, he co-hosted game duties. He did a bunch of timeout skits with us.

53:49He hit a half court shot in one try to like win money for one of our kids campers. Like it was incredible. It was just like a Jester takeover game and like his vibe was so positive and everybody just felt so good about it. We obviously got content from it. And Jester's YouTube channel is going to post a long form video of it in a few weeks, which will be really exciting to see as it'll kind of expose the whole thing to his audience as well as ours. But it was really cool. It was really just a way to interact with somebody who's really reaching a certain, you know, segment of the audience that I feel like can be underserved by by teams like ours sometimes.

54:21And I feel like you're going to see a lot more of this across sports moving forward. What are the ramifications of that shift that you're talking about? Like the fact that, you know, some people have never come across someone with 37 million subscribers. Right. And how does that impact your strategy and how you think about working with creators? It makes it so that you really need to have a plan. You know, like it's like there's no longer everybody's in one space and all you have to do is make like good content for that space or people aren't coming to you as much anymore. Right. Like you need to like know, OK, who's real in this space?

54:52Like who's reaching people? How are like audiences engaging? What do people want to see and what balance can you strike? Like you can't go all in one way or the other, right? Like you need to diversify your content offerings and where your brand is showing up, but you need to do it in smart ways that feel real. And so everything is like so thought through. It's not like, hey, Jester has 37 million followers. So like, let's just spray and pray a bunch of content to reach 37 million people. It just means you probably need to have specialists and think about, you know, how things have involved. YouTube is so important for like where we're going in the future.

55:22And it's so different than any other platform, right? Like on YouTube, your average watch time is measured in minutes, not seconds. People are choosing what videos to watch versus sort of passively being served them. And what that means is you can't treat it exactly the same as you might treat Instagram or TikTok or whatever.

55:41Jasmine Enberg: So how do you treat it then? We were going to ask because, I mean, I think there's been, you know, obviously so much momentum around sports on YouTube specifically and YouTube has been playing into that. And we're seeing more leagues and sports teams really try to build out their strategy. So how do you treat YouTube and where does it kind of fit into your content priorities? So we have five like content organizational goals that like all of content, all 30 people are like meant to be kind of like working towards. And one of them is like our long form strategy and YouTube. And this is the first year that we've sort of refocused on that.

56:13So that means testing. That means like, what are we using for titles and thumbnails to kind of draw people in? How are we structuring videos to kind of keep them? What is the storytelling that we're doing? you sort of recognize like this is where people are spending real time using watch time as a KPI over impressions I think is something that's been like a recent shift for us because we realize that like what you want is people spending time with your brand so I think what you've seen probably from the Bulls YouTube this year is a lot of different like tests like we have had many different long-form types of content documentary series kind of features on players we have tried an hour-long Spanish-language podcast that did really well.

56:51I had no idea how that would work with a former player, but all in Spanish, and that found an audience. It is just where people are going to play, but you have to focus on it. It has to be a part of a strategy. You have to have a plan. You have to think about exactly what you're doing, how you're structuring videos, and we're still doing a lot of testing and learning, but one interesting fact we learned going into this season just by looking at our own analytics was this was the first year that more people were watching our YouTube videos on their televisions than on their phones. So that means like they are watching it like they used to watch television.

57:26Like it's like Netflix, like you pull up YouTube on your TV and you watch it and you have the full screen and your full attention. And that's fundamentally a different kind of content than this more short form kind of TikTok stuff you might see. That stuff is important for sure. And like, I think like that continues to be a focus. But I I think the point is that YouTube needs to be its own focus and it's almost a separate work stream completely from, you know, the other social platforms. What are the other four? If YouTube is one priority, what are the other four? One is just about building like good branded content so that we continue to drive revenue.

57:56But like the revenue, the content remains good and doesn't feel overly commercial. One is to lean into kind of player focused storytelling. So it's like tell the stories of our players and continue to kind of bring people closer to these guys as players. There's one is like a little bit more internal about like how we kind of like work together as a content team. It's a big team. Like we need to be kind of working together. And then one is about defining our audience for what our content is before we create content. So we need to make sure the audience is in mind. We're not making stuff for us.

58:26We're making stuff for audiences. And I think that's a good example of like what the Jester activation was.

58:31Jasmine Enberg: So going back to the Jester activation for just a minute, because, you know, you talked a lot about how you need to show up in the places where people are. but that also sometimes means showing up in real life, right? And I think, you know, the Kid Nation game is such a good example of that. Is that something that you're thinking about kind of repeating, doing again? Is this going to be like an ongoing part of your content strategy? Yeah, I just think like it's like it's important to like have in-person experiences too, right? Like we're also an events business where people are coming in here.

59:01And I think like you can make a lot of impact through digital platforms, but like it is also really important to engage people live. This is actually not the first time we've had, it's the first time we did a full takeover game with anybody, but it's not the first time that we've brought in a creator. Cam Wilder came out last year, also like a great creator who is big with that audience. And he came out and we did an activation with him and a bunch of kids that went super well. So it's a test case that's been proven to work. And I think you'll continue to see us invest in it. And you're going to see other teams start doing it as well.

59:30This is where things are going. You know what I mean? Like this is not going away. So it will be cool to see like what we do, but it will be cool to see what the entire industry kind of does in the space moving forward. How do you see like potential sponsors or partners coming in as well, kind of beyond creators for these types of events? Sponsors and partners, they come on board because they also want to reach our audience, right? And I think that what I like to think is that given that's one of our goals is we also find really natural ways to integrate them in ways that are actually like engaging.

59:59I feel like your audience, you have a promise to them, right? Like it's like you're following us and because we give you good content and we do great storytelling that engages you and makes you feel closer to the bulls and whatever it is that you're looking for, hopefully we like deliver on that. I think fundamentally people accept that people will bring partners in to be exposed to that audience. But done tastefully and smartly and like added value, I think that for me is sort of the promise to the audience. That if you break it and all of a sudden you're starting to just be very commercial and, you know, product first, I think like that is ultimately a betrayal of the audience.

1:00:37And I think that you will see that in the numbers and engagement. BMO has been really, really good and innovative with us, BMO Harris Bank, in terms of coming on board with crazy ideas that we didn't know. We don't know if it's going to work or like how it's going to be received.

1:00:49Jasmine Enberg: Like what? Well, like even the Cam Wilder thing, like that was the first time we had done creator activation. And they were, you know, like they helped us out with like being a part of that, like a huge part of that. And I think they trusted us. And, you know, they're really smart marketers as well. But, you know, that's that's a partner that's done weird stuff with us for a decade now. Like way back, we did narrative movies on Snapchat where we did a musical starring one of our players pretending to be, you know, the bad guy in Beauty and the Beast. And BMO was on board with that, too. So you find good partners who believe in you.

1:01:19And like if you're excited about an idea, they'll get excited about an idea. And I think that's just a natural part of the space. Brands have always been part of content. Like from the beginning of time, soap operas are called soap operas because they were originally funded by soap companies. The concept of branded content has always been something that has existed. And so fans and audiences are always going to be okay with that and embrace it as long as it's good, right? As long as it, like, maintains, like, a certain level.

1:01:45Jasmine Enberg: So one of the things that you said there is delivering on the promise to your audience. And obviously when you're making, you know, all of these new moves, whether that's working with creators or building out your YouTube strategy or just expanding your presence on social media, A lot of the goal of that is to expand your audience, whether that's internationally or into different demographics. So how do you balance maintaining and serving your core basketball fans while you're still trying to attract casual sports fans as well? We're still a basketball team. Like, we still have that, offer that.

1:02:17You still offer highlights and behind-the-scenes stories of our players. And if you're a hardcore Bulls fan who doesn't care about anything else and thinks this creator stuff is just BS, like, you still have that, right? We offer that still. I think the name of the game now is not being one thing. You have to be many different things and be able to reach people in different ways because there's not everyone is consuming. There's very few things that everyone consumes the exact same way. So I think that that's an important thing for brands to remember, for sports teams to remember. And I think that's how you do it.

1:02:46We're still honest with our just because Jester took over the game didn't mean that we stopped covering the basketball game. right? Like they won that game. Like we still had a lot of content from that game. The team played well. We still did all the things that we would normally do. And if you only cared about whether the Bulls won or lost that game, there was still content for you. Like that gesture stuff didn't interrupt. And so I think like that to me is like the important thing to remember is just like everyone has like, you have to diversify because everybody has a completely different set of interests in their content diet.

1:03:14Jasmine Enberg: So one of the things that you said as well is that, you know, Excited to meet Jesser. And so many of them are becoming creators themselves. I mean, they're posting content from the games. They're also posting behind the scenes content. Are you encouraging players to do that? And if so, are you helping them with the strategy at all? So there are certain things that we can't do, right? Like there's like certain services like teams can't offer players like outside of their contract. But I would say like we work hand in hand with them in a lot of ways. And I think that there's a lot of ways we kind of are able to cross over.

1:03:52It is something that we've noticed, obviously, and some more than others. But increasingly, like you're you're seeing it. They don't just understand it and have their own TikToks or whatever. But Jared McCain is a really good example. He's a guard from the Oklahoma City Thunder who has his own YouTube channel. And when he got traded, this trade deadline from Philadelphia to Oklahoma City, he posted a video showing what it's like for a player to be traded from their perspective. I've never seen that before. I've seen teams do behind the scenes of like welcoming new players. Obviously, that's something that we've done as well.

1:04:21It was the first time I'd seen a player just be like, OK, here's me getting on the flight to like my new team. Here's like me going. And it was super interesting. And to me, it was like this like moment of like, wow, like this is the first time we're seeing it like you're just going to see more of it. So I think that players will increasingly have their own platforms. And I think that that's ultimately a good thing because as they continue to build their brands, like other brands rise together. So hopefully we find ways to kind of work together on that. The NBA is the content business ultimately.

1:04:50And I think players really understand that.

1:04:52Jasmine Enberg: But it is also kind of like two full-time jobs, right? I mean, Kaya and I have been creating content now for what, like four months? And like there are not enough hours in the day for us to write a twice weekly newsletter, record a podcast once a week. I mean, how, you know, do they balance that? The need to be developing content, but also being out on the court, playing a game or being at practice. Well, I'm sure they have teams, right? They have content teams. We have 30 people working on content at the Bulls. It's not like a couple of people. What you guys do with two people is amazing. I think that I would guess that they have editors and teams that they're working with.

1:05:28And I think they'll ultimately build themselves as creators. You know what I mean? We talk a lot about creators. Players have this big platform. There's a lot of opportunities if you're a player coming up right now to own your story. But that's just kind of where society is going now, right? It's like there's a podcast for every subject you could possibly be interested in. there's YouTube content for everything. I started randomly getting into chess last year and I fell down the YouTube rabbit hole of like chess content. Like there's like, you know, if you like cooking, there's like plenty there.

1:05:56So there's something out there for everyone. And I think, I think we're a content forward society for better or for worse. And I think like, that's something that I think brands need to continue to recognize. We also don't own the spaces anymore, right? Like we don't have, it's so easy to make content now. It's so easy to, to everyone has a phone in their pocket that they can like make videos with now, right? There's not this like barrier to entry of you need expensive equipment and you need to be this like huge company with deep pockets to like make content. Like anybody can do it. And I think what results in that is like, you don't automatically get an audience because you're big.

1:06:29Like you have to make good content and smart strategic content.

1:06:32Jasmine Enberg: What are the ramifications of that, you know, from the bull's perspective of not owning these platforms, right? You don't own the distribution when you're on YouTube, for example. You know, there's pluses and minuses to everything, but you have to look at it as an opportunity. What are some of the pluses and minuses? A plus is that it's, in theory, democratized so that if you make really good content that's for a specific audience and it resonates with people, like, it finds an audience, right? Like, the content we created in January around Derrick Rose's Jersey retirement, the numbers are staggering.

1:07:02Like, people were really interested in that. People really wanted to spend time with it. and like just deep diving into that, you're like, wow, like we created something that's good and like lasting and we put it out on the YouTube platform and it found an audience, like people watched it, right? And I think like that's really exciting as a plus. Like you can stand out, like if you make good content and you have a plan. The minuses is you're at the mercy of an algorithm. You don't own like that audience. Like you're sort of like you're renting space, but everyone's in the same boat. You know what I mean?

1:07:29Like everyone is doing the same thing. And I just think the fact that there's no monoculture can be scary in a lot of ways, especially for brands that normally are like, we are the monoculture, like everyone is sitting down watching this. Like, I just think like that can be scary in a lot of ways because you're just not given anything, right? Like it's just, you don't get to like, just be the bulls and like have a huge audience just because you have like that brand name. You have to do things to engage people or you become irrelevant. You have to earn it. Yeah.

1:07:55Jasmine Enberg: So last question, looking more broadly beyond the bulls, are there other teams or leagues or creators or brands that you look to for inspiration? Are there, you know, certain companies that you think are building really well in this space? I have always loved how Red Bull approaches content and content marketing. And I've always loved that they have their product, which is energy drink, and then they have the culture that they're building and selling, which is, you know, everybody kind of knows without even needing to be told what the culture is and whether that's people skydiving or BMX bikers or like whatever, like it's like it's a vibe.

1:08:28And I think that they've invested in that they're constantly like doing things that are interesting not necessarily even with like name brand people like it's like I think they've they were the first brand I think that like treated themselves as what we would now modernly call a creator right like they were a creator brand so I've always enjoyed seeing like what what they've been doing and past that like I we we do look at like a lot of creators for inspiration more so than other teams because they're the ones who are doing it right and how they're structuring their videos and how they're like reaching people and how they're like engaging things.

1:08:59Even something as simple as like to give you a very specific example. When Mr. Beast promotes his new YouTube videos, when he drops a new YouTube video, he doesn't like link it from when he's promoting it on like Twitter or Instagram or whatever. He's not like, here's a link to like my new video. He just says, I have a new video. It's, you know, 10 people are in a hole and the last one to get out, whatever the video is. And he's like, check it out on YouTube. And so what that has people doing is going to YouTube searching Mr. Beast video, people in a hole or whatever it is. And then the algorithm says people are searching for it, which then helps like the video continue to grow versus, you know, platforms don't like it when you go one platform to another.

1:09:36So even that insight, like that's how we started to promote our YouTube videos of just like, hey, our new all access is out, check it out on YouTube with like a clip preview elsewhere. So there's like little things that like people are doing that are they're like sort of figuring out how everything works. And you want to kind of take the inspiration from the people who are doing it right. And a lot of times in our space, it's creators like Jesser.

1:09:55Jasmine Enberg: All right, Luca, rapid fire. What has been your favorite creator partnership so far? It has to be the Jesser one. Like it's just, it was, it just went so big. Who is your favorite basketball player? Oh, all time. Coutinho Mobley, who is a guard for the Rockets. His nickname was Cat and he was just the coolest vibe ever. If you had to pick YouTube shorts, TikTok or Instagram reels? TikTok. Favorite sport other than basketball? Boxing. Why? That's my weird quirky sport that I've always loved and the one I've never worked in and I'm okay with that. It's like I've just, I've always loved boxing. As messy and as niche and as convoluted as it can be, there's something different about it than any other sport to me.

1:10:37Jasmine Enberg: I'm a hockey fan myself. Oh, nice. Yeah. I mean, coming from Finland, you have to be a hockey fan. You're basically just born into it. You have no choice in the matter. You know, one of our top YouTube videos ever is a speaking Finnish segment that we did with Lowry Markkinen. No way. It's one of our like most viewed all time YouTube videos. Okay, somebody tell me how you're supposed to really say that.

1:10:59Jasmine Enberg: What global sporting event should everybody attend at least once in their life? We did a segment for our YouTube on the Partizan versus Red Star Belgrade Derby rivalry game. And it is by far the craziest atmosphere that I have ever been to in any sport. And I'm not just saying that because I'm Serbian. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jasmine. Thank you so much, Luca, for joining us. We really appreciate it. Yeah, this was awesome. I really enjoyed it. And I really enjoyed pretending like I was a real podcaster in the studio with you guys today. Thanks so much for joining us. We'll see you next Thursday.