45.5% of U.S. influencer marketing spend now goes to accounts under 20,000 followers, and Facebook is testing a video-first home screen
Some 45.5% of U.S. influencer marketing spend this year goes to accounts with fewer than 20,000 followers, while the share held by accounts above one million falls to 9% by 2027, according to eMarketer.
Jung Han
The shift follows a change in how content is priced — on relevance rather than reach. Recommendation systems and conversational interfaces have taken over the discovery work users once did by curating a follow list and scrolling it in order, giving platforms every reason to surface content that matches an individual's intent over content built for the broadest possible appeal. Axios described the state of play on July 28 as the internet's low-effort era.
Meta Turns the Home Screen Over to Video
Meta announced on July 24, in a newsroom post titled "Connecting Real People on Facebook," that it is testing an app that opens straight into a full-screen vertical video stream. The Classic Feed, the app's front door for more than two decades, moves to a second tab.
Tom Alison, Head of Facebook, wrote that people are signaling they want more immersive, video-forward experiences, and that video is where conversations, communities and commerce are taking place.
The test starts later this year in international markets with heavy video consumption, with a U.S. rollout under review for 2027. Users in the test can revert to the feed-first layout, and the Classic Feed remains available as a tab. Reels, across Facebook and Instagram, sits at a $50 billion annual run rate and now generates more advertising revenue than YouTube.