QVC Built Ten Studios Just For TikTok
Ulta's CMO is still arguing with her CFO, and Instagram opened a 90 minute format it will not pay for
Hi friends!
Costume idea for this weekend: the Ghost of Instagram Shop. A live shopping host carrying a bunch of QR codes with broken shopping links. Total nightmare! 👻
This week, QVC built ten studios just for TikTok, Ulta’s CMO is arguing with her own CFO about what creator content counts as, and Instagram opened a 90 minute video format it will not pay for.
Let’s dig in.
October 27th
📺️ QVC built ten studios just for TikTok
QVC does about 200 hours a week of live on TikTok, against roughly 60,000 hours a year of live TV. It built 10 studios just for TikTok, shot on phones rather than the robotic cameras its TV sets use, with their own hosts. SVP of social commerce Krystyna Taheri says TikTok runs 20 to 30 second hooks where TV runs seven to eight minute segments.
It built this while going into Chapter 11 in April and coming out in August, cutting over $5 billion of debt on falling revenue. So it was a choice, not spare cash. QVC decided its livestream is a different product from its TV segment, not a shorter version of it. Most brands staffing TikTok Shop are doing the reverse. All figures are QVC’s own.
🛍️ Ulta’s CMO is still arguing with her CFO
Kelly Mahoney, CMO of Ulta Beauty, told an Advertising Week New York panel that she has to convince her CFO that creator content “is actually working media.” Ulta spent $491 million on advertising in the year to January 31 and lifted spend 21% in Q2. Nothing in the accounting has changed yet.
The useful part is who is stuck. A $491 million advertiser cannot get creator content classified as media, which makes this a budget category problem before it is a measurement one. If the biggest buyers are losing that argument internally, a smaller brand quoting reach at its finance team will not win it. Mahoney’s answer is triangulation and a confidence level, not proof.
🛒 Instagram opened a 90 minute format it will not pay for
Instagram is testing Features, horizontal uploads of up to 90 minutes, after a trial in Brazil. A companion tool cuts up to eight clips out of each long video, all linking back, recommended on Explore. There is no ad revenue share. Meta says it is “too early to share a long-term monetization model.” YouTube pays 55%.
With no payout, the only durable way to fund 90 minutes here is a sponsor, so brand budget is the first monetisation layer and the inventory exists before the competition for it. Set that against last week’s finding that AI engines mostly cite reviews and comparisons running eight minutes or longer. Instagram opened the format as that evidence landed, though YouTube was the cited source, so this is a bet.
🎤 Seller Spotlight
The top of TikTok Shop’s seller list is churning
Kalodata’s top 10 independent TikTok Shop creators did $10.91 million in September, down from $14.04 million in August and the lowest month this year. Five of the ten had never appeared in the list before. These are Kalodata estimates rather than platform reported figures, and the data does not say where the creators are based.
Followers do not carry it: @morganliving did $864,330 on 49,900 followers, while @dj.foof did $913,140 on 858,100.
Nor does engagement: @highland.fashion7 did $881,400 at a 0.08% engagement rate, the lowest on the list.
Follower count and engagement rate both fail to predict GMV here, which is the same thing last week’s research found about view count and AI citation. If you are filtering sellers on a follower threshold, you are filtering on a number that does not carry the signal you want. The list also turns over fast, so a roster built from last quarter’s top performers is already out of date.
🧠 Brand Move of the Week
SharkNinja launched two programs. First Fans gives its 4,100 plus employees training, monthly content challenges and affiliate commissions for those eligible. Storytellers opens the same track to consumers, with the most active getting unreleased product and input into development. The company claims more than 19 billion impressions across 200,000 posts this year, mostly from its community rather than its marketing, on no stated method.
Chief Brand and Experience Officer Michelle Crossan-Matos frames this as community. The sharper read is supply. Two weeks ago we covered the top of the creator market cutting from a hundred brand deals to five, and this is the other answer to that problem: if roster slots are scarce and expensive, build your own supply out of people who already hold the product.
Check the incentive before copying it. No commission rates or eligibility rules have been published, and an employee creator program with no real upside is an internal comms exercise with a content quota attached.
📰 Other news you should look at for this week
Creator posts now rival search for Gen Z product discovery. Morning Consult surveyed 6,283 US adults from September 17 to 22. Online search leads at 37%, creator posts sit at 33%. Well known and smaller creators came within two points of each other on self reported purchase. 📎 Read more
AliExpress and YouTube launched a global affiliate partnership. Creators tag products inside YouTube Studio across long form, Shorts and livestreams. It has been live in South Korea since March, with the US, Brazil, UK and Germany announced and no dates attached to any of them. 📎 Read more
Almost no AI generated Meta ads say so. Resemble AI scanned 37,768 ad files from Meta’s public Ad Library in September and flagged 8.9%, roughly one in 11, as AI generated or manipulated. Two of them disclosed it. Resemble sells the detection tool used. 📎 Read more
Ok, see you next week. In the meantime, Sell! Sell! Sell! 🫡