With so many creators making their livelihoods across social platforms, players like shopping app LTK and creators virtually have no control over how those algorithms shift and prioritize content.
More importantly, this leaves creators vulnerable if their affiliate businesses are built on social media, like TikTok and Instagram. LTK hopes to give back control to creators with a revamp of its consumer app that began in late February.
LTK (LiketoKnow.it) might be best known for finding deals and trendy influencers, but the company is now overhauling its consumer experience to focus on more entertainment and social media features, like direct messages, discovery feed and videos. The new app will look and feel more like a social app with a watch video tab based on location and interests, a home feed of updates from creators, chat tab for messaging and a discover page for finding more related content.
LTK did not provide new updates from its launch, including how many creators have posted video content and the daily users on the app.
“Because traditional social media platforms have shifted from a place to see people you follow to algorithm-driven, interest-based feeds, there’s a lane open to create this type of experience,” said Dina Murphy, product director of LTK.
It’s also about attracting more ad dollars: If creators are able to grow their social content on LTK, the app can use it to attract more advertisers — especially those eager to reach its some 40 million monthly users (with 38% being Gen Z and millennial women in the U.S.), according to LTK at the ANA Creator Marketing Conference this January. In a session on social commerce, the company also noted a high “saturation” of users with an income of $100,000 or more.
Despite a difficult economic time, some people will still shop for non-essentials from DTC brands and other luxury goods. This February, high average order value brands ($250+) in apparel, shoes and accessories were up 7% year-over-year, and high-ticket home brands ($500+) saw double-digit growth (while lower-ticket brands lagged behind), according to figures provided by Belardi Wong, an agency working with high-end fashion and retail brands.
Yet Murphy pointed to a bigger problem of decline in creator content visibility on major platforms, marked by LTK creators seeing average social impressions per post on their Meta apps drop significantly since last year, according to LTK’s internal data. (Murphy declined to share specific figures.) This could result in creator content not being seen if other content is prioritized higher in users’ feeds, Murphy explained.
“It’s a huge, huge problem and then of course, has downstream funnel impacts, which is if creators are or consumers are not seeing that post — then they’re not shopping for it and they’re not buying it,” Murphy told Digiday.
If anything, revamping LTK to get more creators making videos also comes amid ongoing uncertainty in the short-form video space. TikTok’s questionable long-term status in the U.S. has pushed many creators to diversify their content and revenue streams across multiple platforms beyond social media, from Substack newsletters to Tumblr blogs – but whether LTK and other commerce platforms can gain from this remains to be seen.
Some 250,000 creators are on LTK, and 38% of all Gen Z and millennial and 21% of all adult women (18+) are LTK users, based on U.S. population data, according to Murphy. Its consumer app, which first launched in 2017, isn’t trying to compete with social giants like TikTok or Instagram, though.
“Our purpose and business models are different [from social platforms],” Murphy said. “Just as you see LinkedIn as a place for professionals existing alongside traditional social media platforms – LTK is the place to catch up with creators you follow and control your feed to discover creators relevant to you.”
So far, between LTK and shopping and affiliate app ShopMy, Lindsay Nead, CEO of talent agency Parker Management, sees about a 50/50 split of creators using the two. However, Nead said there has been some uptick of creators moving over to ShopMy for better commission and certain backend features that are more user-friendly, she explained. ShopMy has a network of some 70,000 creators, who can create storefronts and link their socials and newsletters, but it is more of an influencer marketing platform that streamlines the talent discovery and campaign management.
“Historically, most creators have all been using LTK,” Nead said. “But over the last year, ShopMy has been taking more and more creators. I think everybody will still keep LTK – obviously they have both, but we’re just seeing more and more creators use ShopMy more frequently for [slightly more lucrative commission structures].”
ShopMy offers creators commission rates for affiliates ranging from 10% to 30%, per the company. The LTK average commission rate is between 10% to 25%, but can reach up to 30% as well, according to the company. In both cases, retailers set their own commission rates for products, so the exact rates can vary depending on brand. LTK is not changing commission rates with this app update.
Another incentive for creators to use LTK: Creators using it frequently and successfully also get more brand partnerships “within their ecosystem” of brands that LTK works with, such as Walmart and Nordstrom, Nead added. ShopMy also has similar incentives to brands using the platform, from Chanel to Nike, to allow campaign proposals directly from creators, as well as paid partnership and negotiation tools for all parties. ShopMy also provides agency services from its in-house team, from focusing on creator partnerships to affiliate programs.
“[LTK will] include you in more of those partnerships if you’re using the app and successful using it,” Nead said.
For example, LTK creators that organically discovered and started promoting the viral Stanley Cups led to a spike in traffic to the product. LTK is also partnering with NFL wives and girlfriends to promote team gear and drive more brand awareness and sales, as well as partnering with Olympians and Bloomingdale’s to find more brand opportunities during major events. In a LTK case study, a U.K.-based style creator grew her income from 1,000 euros to 128,000 euros per year — after repurposing her social media content, going to events with creators and pivoting to product reviews as opposed to collages.
Another change to LTK is no longer requiring creators to tag products since last year. This is another way the app hopes to encourage more types of video content posted by creators, Murphy explained.
“We’re talking to creators about [giving] us all of your rich, awesome content that you have for storytelling, and then what this watch tab is meant to do is really help you connect to the right consumers,” Murphy added.
For its part, LTK aims to appeal to creators by providing a social media experience that people were used to in the early days of Facebook or Instagram – one where they follow people and see their updates based on recency – at a time when major social platforms are moving away from that personal feed to prioritize trending content. (Although, there is now an option to flip back to chronological browsing on Instagram, for example.) LTK is also introducing new video editing tools on the creator app to make it easier to produce content.
“The community that I had and created and nurtured as a creator for over 10-plus years is no longer seeing my content, and I need a place to do that,” Murphy said.
Increasingly, Nead’s agency advises creators to pick at least two channels that they own, whether it’s a personal website or a newsletter list. If they are using LTK and other shopping apps, content is usually repurposed, but with these new features she could see incentive to make content for LTK that is more focused on entertaining videos, like outfit ideas or other ways to use products.
“I definitely feel like people want deals [on LTK], but some more like fashion style creators, they do date night looks [and show] five back-to-back outfits of date night looks,” Nead said. “I think that’s a really intriguing way for their audiences to shop, so that’s where that video content is really, really helpful. It’s more almost informative video content versus, like, entertaining content.”
