Social media died four years ago and for the last four years we’ve been in interest media. You no longer get the content on your feeds from the people you follow like your cousin or your best friend from middle school. You get content based on what you’ve recently been into. Interest media is the term that’s used for the current state of what it was known as social media. Where you get content that’s based on what you’re currently interested in.

This is the current state of the internet and very important because interest media allows platforms to keep users on the platform longer because you’re seeing things you’re actually into now, not people you used to follow. Your ability to change what you’re seeing in your feed is very, very, very real and all you have to do is use the search function in these platforms and search new topics and engage with that content. Or use the explore page and engage with it. Or control “not interested” in the content that you’re no longer interested in.

I do think people eventually will get tired of this and I predict that long-term platforms are going to have both an interest media feed and a social media feed, aka people that you want to follow.

I think a double-feed platform is inevitable.

Breaking Through Is Easier Than Ever Before

This new interest media era really opens up a lot more merit and a lot more democracy and a lot more meritocracy than the prior social media era. The prior social media era gave advantages to people like myself who moved quickly and amassed a lot of followers on new platforms that would go on to become important.

In this era it is much easier to break out and create a following because if you’re making content that resonates with the audience in whatever subject matter—whether it’s entertainment, whether it’s escapism, whether it’s information—the speed in which you can gain traction is substantially different than any other era of social media prior. What we started seeing in 2017 and 2018 in TikTok now has hit every single platform from LinkedIn to YouTube Shorts. It just creates an enormous opportunity.

Because of the ‘TikTok-ification’ of social media in the last three years, every social network no longer operates based on how many followers you have; it goes on the merit of the creative itself. I have 15 million followers on TikTok—but there’s somebody out there who is going to get motivated today, create a TikTok, make their first video tomorrow, and that video will get more views than the post I will share that same day.

Let me give you an example. You might have seen the piece of content where I met that young girl after a talk and she said, “One day I’m going to be somebody.” And I said, “You’re somebody now.” I started a new TikTok account called youaresomebodynow as the name of the handle. The first post on that account with zero followers was a slight edit on the video that did well for me, and that video with zero followers got 9.4 million organic views.

That same video I posted, slightly differently, three weeks earlier on my TikTok account that has 15 million followers, got 300,000 views.

That’s how the game is now. If that doesn’t motivate you to start posting,I have no idea what data will.

You Don’t Have to Be On Camera To Make Content

One of the great opportunities is to be more platform diverse. Too many people are just on one or two platforms, TikTok and Instagram, when Facebook and Twitter and Substack and Snapchat spotlight are all viable options.

If you do not like the way you look on video, you must get very serious about Substack. Substack is one of the most important new platforms of information. It is really a newsletter, email type. It’s written content. It’s become remarkable. In fact, I believe one person here is about to make more money being a writer on Substack that charges $3.99, $7.99, $9.99 a month to their subscribers, like paid for information, which is really rare in the last 15 years, than they do in their practice. I believe someone in 10 years is going to send me an email and say they were reading this and they have now eclipsed in revenue their subscription revenue for their written content, than actually the revenue they get from their practice.

If you are a good writer, please go do five hours of homework. And literally this is how you do it. You go into ChatGPT type, “GaryVee just talked about Substack. I’m a chiropractor. What do I need to know?” Enter.

Information is now useless. It is literally a commodity. It is not valuable yet people will pay for it if they connect with the person.

Substack is an incredible opportunity for a lot of you. It will be a lead gen to your business. You will do the jabbing, not the right hooks. You will show up and write things that people should do, tips and tricks, things that you’ve observed in being in this business for 20 years, classic mistakes that people make after they stop using your service.

The Battleground for Attention

Everybody here, me included, we’re all battling right now for the same thing. This is a full battleground now for attention. Attention has always been the asset, but what has changed is attention used to be available to a small group of companies that had a lot of money. The fact that the individual person now is about to build a billion-dollar corporation is incredible.

The only arbitrage you can rely on long term is the brand you build either for yourself if you are comfortable and interested in being out in front or putting those energies to building some sort of brand equity in a brand that you create. I believe more day by day it will matter. If you’re not doing either, the person sitting next to you is going to and they’re going to take more market share.

Making Different Kind Of Stuff: The Psycho Discipline

I think the biggest issue for most people and brands right now is they’re not making enough different kind of stuff and touching on enough different kind of subject matters, content styles, platforms, and this is hurting brands tremendously. Most brands and people want to be “on brand” or own a niche. No niche is ownable because of the volume of people, and being on brand is subjective and often narrow and eliminates the purpose of what most brands and businesses are trying to do, which is be relevant to as many different people as possible so their business actually goes up.

All you have to do is make organic social media content over and over and over again in as many different ways as possible across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube shorts, LinkedIn, different thumbnails, different hooks, complete insane psycho discipline. You need to become a psycho at that. Do you know that if you went outside right now and made a video of eating a banana and drinking a rum and coke and posted it that people that have a high propensity of interest in bananas and rum and coke might be the first people that see that content?

The world we’re in now allows you to close the gap very quickly. Your third TikTok, if you make the right piece of content, can fundamentally change the course of your career. It’s about the intoxicating nature of the merit of a single post now, not what you’ve done to get to that single post.

Brand Will Become More Important In The Age of AI

The last 10 years of technology shifts are going to seem slow compared to the next 10. We are living in an extremely interesting time where the competitive landscape is changing quite a bit because of the convergence of social blockchain and AI all at the same time.

Every piece of content you make today is being indexed to show up on the results when every single person in the world in four years goes to an AI bot. Every piece of content you make today is being indexed to show up on the results when every single person in the world in four years goes to an AI bot. Let me give you an example. AI getting really strong and voice devices are going to really confuse people. For example, the Alexa in your home. I think that when you come home you walk into your kitchen and you're like, "Alexa, my son is having a sleepover tonight. Three friends are coming over. One's lactose intolerant, one's gluten-free. Two of them love spicy food and one kid is Persian, and I'd love for him to feel at home. Can you please order dinner for all of us? We're going to eat at 7:30 tonight. Thanks.” When that then takes that and orders from four different places and delivers you a perfect meal in what I just said for real, you have to understand then in that scenario, Amazon has all the leverage because it's going to decide where that sale is going to go. That's called not having brand. “Alexa, can you send me a pizza tonight? I have 20 people over.” That's different than, “Alexa, send me Pizza Hut tonight. I've got 20 people.” We are going into a place where all that's been happening over the last forever, but accelerating the last 30, 40 years, is we choose convenience over everything. Even when we can't afford stuff, we'll pay for time. AI is going to make everything convenient. You're going to have AI agents shop for you in the background. You have no idea how big this is going to be. And so, if you're not a brand, the human is not going to choose you. You're going to choose it generically. You're going to talk and make decisions based on general principles. I need sneakers versus I need Reebok. I need pizza versus Pizza Hut. I need business advice versus I need business advice from GaryVee.

Brand is the only thing left in a world of technology at scale and that's what's going to happen.

People continue to look at AI as a job killer. I continue to see it as an accelerator for people that are on that grind and you are going to be able to do more and get into more.

The Year of Action.

My friends, preparation, the theme of this being ready for the moment is very very interesting and exciting mentally. But you have to put it into practice too.

You could be mentally prepared for running the New York Marathon, mentally prepared for running it, but if you do not train for it for the months leading up to it, only so much is going to happen. I need all of you to take 2026 and make it an action year, not a thinking year. I could think all I want about fixing my left QL, but it took the action to fix that.

You want to grow or fix your business or make yourself bulletproof or be prepared for the moment? Well, guess what? The moment’s coming. It’s called AI. But good news, you can take it and control it. You can tame the sword and weaponize it for you or you can have it slice your head off. That’s up to you. I picked the first one.

Most companies treat marketing like it’s still television. They assume every piece of creative has to be perfect before it goes out because they think they only get one shot.

But that mindset is exactly what’s slowing them down. Now, the market can give you the answer in minutes. The problem is most teams are still stuck debating ideas in meetings while the audience is ready to respond.

Put out your content and see what happens. You see what doors open. You see how people react. At Vayner, we put time into it, but we don’t obsess over the edit. I don’t think that just because something isn’t perfectly tight or perfectly sharp means you stop it. I’d rather see how it does. Then you do it again. Then maybe the people talking in the comments say, “Hey, let’s go this way.” Then you try that. You do it again. It’s iterative, just like life.

The Market Gives Better Answers Than Internal Opinions

I value the actual results and the insights more than the opinion. Subjective opinion isn’t zero value, but I don’t value it as much as what happens once the creative hits the feed. We lean into the comments section. We look at the reaction.

That’s a lot more helpful than sitting around asking people, “What do you think?” People have opinions, but the market has the answer. The data and the comments give you qualitative insight, not just quantitative data.

The problem is that a lot of entrepreneurs and leaders are insecure. They think they only have one chance. It’s like television thinking. They think if the video only gets seventeen views, it’s a failure. Brands think the same thing. They think every piece has to be perfect before it goes out. But that mindset slows everything down.

You still see subjectivity dominate the process. Someone says, “We can’t use that color because the CEO doesn’t like it,” or “Our main color is red so we can’t try this other thing.” Meanwhile the real world could give you the answer in minutes if you just posted it.

The world is just more fair now. The market gives immediate feedback. Instead of arguing internally about what might work, you can put it out and find out what actually works.

The New Creative Process

The new game is post, revise, post again, revise, post again. The old game was email chains, Slack debates, and meetings about one word for two weeks. That’s crazy. The market will tell you faster than any meeting ever will.

I’d rather make a hundred pieces of creative than spend four-hour meetings trying to perfect three pieces. Obviously there’s nuance, but generally speaking, volume and iteration beat overthinking. Once the content hits the feed, the views are the views. The reactions are the reactions. The comments tell you what people actually feel.

Sometimes I know right away that something could be better. Maybe the transition could be quicker. Maybe the edit could be tighter. But I still don’t stop it. I let it go out, then we make another version, then another. The humility is saying, “Team, I was wrong, let’s adjust.” That’s the process.

People are trained to debate creative before it goes live. But once it’s live, the market gives you the real answer. The operational process should be simple: make the post, make a revision, push another one. Make a change, push another one. That’s how you learn.

The Cost and Barriers to Testing Creative Have Disappeared

Now we can do this instantly. We can make another version today. Before, part of the inertia was that you had to spend millions on another campaign. Now there’s almost no cost. There’s no barrier. That means there’s no excuse not to test more creative.

This goes back to the idea of good enough versus perfection. People need to be comfortable with good enough so they can make the next version better. Perfectionism is often just insecurity. It slows the process down and kills momentum.

The Teams That Learn the Fastest Will Win

Too many organizations still operate with a mindset shaped by older media.

That way of thinking made sense in a world of expensive television ads and long campaign cycles, but it breaks down in a world where publishing is instant and distribution costs almost nothing. Now, the advantage belongs to the teams that are willing to move quickly, test, and adjust based on real feedback rather than internal opinion.

The biggest shift is moving from subjective debate to market learning. Inside companies, creative decisions can get stuck in endless rounds of personal preference. Someone doesn’t like the color, another person prefers a different cut, and a third executive doesn’t feel good about the idea.

Meanwhile, the audience could have given a clear answer within hours if the content had simply been posted. Instead of relying on internal opinions, marketers should pay attention to the data and the comment section. Audience reactions provide both quantitative signals and qualitative insight about what resonates and what doesn’t.

Speed Unlocks Learning

When teams focus on publishing and iterating instead of perfecting, they dramatically increase the number of experiments they run. One piece of content turns into several variations. Each version teaches something new about what works.

Over time, the process compounds into better instincts, stronger creative, and clearer understanding of the audience. The goal is not to get every piece perfect on the first try, the goal is to make the next piece smarter than the last.

This is why volume beats perfection. A team that publishes dozens or hundreds of pieces of creative gains far more information than a team that spends months perfecting a handful of campaigns. Every post becomes a small test, every reaction becomes data.

The modern creative process is so simple: publish, learn, revise, and publish again. The faster a team can move through that cycle, the faster it improves. What used to take months of campaign planning can now happen in days or even hours. Marketing has become a living process rather than a finished product.

Be OK With “Good Enough”

This approach requires a shift in mindset. Teams must become comfortable with “good enough” as a starting point rather than waiting for perfection. Perfectionism usually hides insecurity, the fear that a piece of creative might not perform well, but the only reliable way to know what works is to put it in front of the audience. When marketers accept that reality, creative speed becomes a competitive advantage.

Because attention moves at the speed of a scroll, the creative process has to move just as fast. Marketing moves so fast now. The teams that succeed are the ones that are willing to ship, learn, and adjust in real time.

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Europe currently has a structural advantage in the social mid-funnel.

Not because European brands are more sophisticated, and not because the platforms work differently. And not because brand building has changed. Instead, it’s because Europe is earlier in the attention lifecycle than the United States.

At VaynerMedia, we believe the best media in the world is buying day-to-day, hands-on keyboard, on the biddable marketplaces of Google, Meta, ByteDance, and so on. That’s a very important setup for what I’m about to explain next.

This is not a “social vs TV” argument. It’s not a dismissal of brand building, and it is not a claim that paid media is broken. This is a regional strategy argument that Europe currently has a structural advantage in the social mid-funnel that most brands are under-exploiting.

Why Smart Marketers Are Hesitating

Everyone agrees social matters, but few agree how. EMEA marketers are caught between:

• Effectiveness science

• Declining trust in digital metrics

• Inflation-era pressure to show short-term results

The skepticism is understandable. Measurement debates around YouTube vs TV reach, platform self-reporting, BARB/Kantar controversies, and attribution models have created distrust. But here’s the key separation: We are typically comparing distribution models, not outcomes.

Views are not attention and attention is not impact.

The debate has drifted from “does this drive growth?” to “can I perfectly reconcile this spreadsheet?” That confusion creates hesitation.

In the UK especially, there’s a vocal contingency sharing critiques:

• Digital and social underperform on brand

• Scale still belongs to broadcast

• Big brands should not behave like startups

This resonates because:

• Measurement distrust is real

• Budget pressure is intense

• No CMO wants to bet brand equity on a platform that feels “small”

There’s also a human factor: Many senior marketers built their careers in the broadcast era. Television was the primary engine of brand building for decades. For some leaders, social still feels unfamiliar, chaotic, or culturally distant. When millions in budget are on the line, it can be easier to default to the channels that built their careers than to fully interrogate a new media reality.

There is a legitimate concern here, but the leap from “measurement is imperfect” to “social is ineffective as a marketing channel” is the misdiagnosis.

The Shift: Mid-Funnel Has Changed

Mid-funnel used to mean retargeting banners and sequential media planning. That is not what it means anymore. Mid-funnel today is about:

• Repeated exposure

• Cultural familiarity

• Borrowed trust

• Context

This is where organic social and creator-led content sit naturally and this is where Europe has whitespace.

The Measurement Problem Is Real, But Misunderstood

Social does something no other channel ever could.

First, social media is underpriced, even still. Social media networks are also aligned with marketers because they’re trying to keep people on their platforms as long as possible. So, they’re trying to show users relevant things, and that is ultimately what marketing is. It was the only platform ever that was aligned on the same mission.

Newspapers, TV, billboards, and direct mail could give a sh*t about what was happening on the other side. In fact, they didn’t even know how to give a sh*t because they couldn’t measure it.

A TV network couldn’t measure if you were watching the commercial or not. A newspaper could not see if you read the ad. Direct mail did not know if you opened the coupon bag. But social can see every action.

Social understands if the person reading this right now on LinkedIn is engaged with this article or not. Did you sit on this post for a minute 45 seconds? Did you like it? Did you comment it? Did you share it? Did you zoom into the picture that I put in with it? Did you watch the video that I brought in to support the article or did you not?

LinkedIn knows that. Meta knows that. ByteDance knows that. Google knows that. Snapchat knows that. Pinterest knows that. Substack knows that, and they’re aligned with us as marketers.

They want to show ads that people actually like so that when you see a bad ad, you don’t jump to one of the other platforms or Netflix or put your phone down and exercise. In hindsight, people realized social media was actually aligned with them as marketers unlike any other platform they gave money to in their careers.

A key insight is not that social reports more data. It is that social allows real-time adaptation, so you can:

• Post organically

• Identify winners

• Put paid behind proven relevance

• Scale what is already working

That loop did not exist in broadcast, and it works particularly well when CPMs are underpriced and feeds are less saturated. Which brings us back to Europe.

The Competitive Gap

In Europe, you’re not competing with the same level of venture capital–based startups as the U.S. that understand this and build their entire brands through this model, as well as influencers who also understand buying media against their best performing assets.

You don’t have that same level of competition, but you have the same level, if not in certain parts of the world more consumption of social, thus rendering the media buy to be wildly underpriced, even in comparison to the US where it’s wildly underpriced. The end.

If I’m paying 9 cents in Europe for the same attention I pay 16 cents in America for—because I have to pay 16 cents because I’m BMW and I’m competing against Mercedes both in America and Europe—but in America I got pesky GaryVee and MrBeast and Feastables and MaryRuth’s Organics and all this other stuff that I’m competing with because the feed is just the feed is just the feed.

So the two scary things for big brands are humans—the individual empire—and startup brands that are well funded, that are direct to consumer, soon to be omni-channel.

This is not about influencer marketing as a tactic. It’s about organic social as a distribution system. The U.S. feed is filled with:

• VC-funded DTC brands

• Founder-led content

• Creator brands buying against organic winners

• A content volume arms race

Europe has:

• Fewer venture-backed disruptors

• Less optimized noise

• More whitespace in attention

CPMs are materially lower, competition density is lower, and consumption levels are similar, which makes it a structural opportunity.

Why the U.S. Is Different

Multiple reasons. There’s just more influencer talent and more sophisticated influencer talent in the US. People that pop in Europe tend to move to Los Angeles.

And there’s a much bigger financial and regulatory system in the US that’s pro–venture capital than there is in the rest of the world.

In other words: The U.S. is later in the attention lifecycle, Europe is earlier. But that window will not stay open forever.

What European CMOs Will Regret

European CMOs will regret not allocating more marketing money to social media production. That investment can allow them to make enough creative to post organically across seven (or more) social channels, and multiple handles per channel.

They’ll regret not investing more in organic social because doing so allows them to see their organic winners. Once they do, then they can put working media money behind their best organic assets.

The number one issue for European and American and global brands in the Fortune 500 is they grossly, and I mean grossly, grossly, grossly, grossly, grossly, grossly underinvest in social media creative production to be distributed in organic channels to take advantage of the AI algorithms that are written for relevance to keep people on these platforms.

Relevance is the starting point to sales. It goes relevance, consideration, transaction. That is tried and true. Nothing has changed, and that is the great mistake of the European CMO.

Now, to be clear, this is not anti-paid, because paid is fuel. But organic and creator-led content are the engine that identifies what deserves fuel. When budgets are tight, that engine matters more.

Where Brands Overspend Instead

Brands overspend on working media that is historically valuable (in their reports) but not real.

That’s typically things like programmatic digital banner ads. Pre-rolls. Television creative production. Making £400,000 videos that are distributed through that bad media. Creative agencies, too: Paying an agency millions, even £5 million, in fee to come up with ideas and decks.

This is not a call to eliminate those channels. It’s more of a call to rebalance. In Europe, that rebalance currently carries more upside than it does in the U.S., because the competitive intensity is lower.

Empathy for the System

This shift is uncomfortable, so we must have empathy for people. My points here challenge procurement structures, agency models, creative hierarchies, and measurement dashboards.

But discomfort does not mean the opportunity is not real.

The Window Won’t Stay Open

Europe will eventually look more like the U.S.

• More VC capital

• More founder brands

• More creator brands

• More feed saturation

• Higher CPMs

When that happens, the arbitrage closes. The opportunity belongs to brands that move before consensus forms. The question is no longer: “Is social fundamental to marketing effectiveness?”

The better question is: Where is attention underpriced? Where is trust compounding?

Today, in much of Europe, the answer is clearer than many marketers are willing to admit, and that clarity will not last forever.

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The No. 1 place for an advertisement is the Super Bowl. Think about it: ~120 million Americans want to watch the 30-second videos on Super Bowl Sunday.

I’m really good at what I do, and on our best day, with our best people, we can’t spend a client’s $10 million anywhere on social and actually get ~100 million people to watch a 30-second video.

Everything that this world wants still exists in one narrow place: the Super Bowl. Because attention is what everyone’s seeking, right? You can’t really tell someone about how great your product is if you don’t have their attention. With the Super Bowl, you have exactly that.

Why the Super Bowl Is Still Underpriced

Regular television commercials are grossly overpriced for the actual reach and consumption that happens. Madison Avenue continues to believe in GRPs (gross rating point) and potential reach of commercials. I see Fortune 500 companies wasting egregious amounts of money on TV commercials.

Meanwhile, the Super Bowl is the mostly grossly-underpriced ad in the world. What you get in a third to two-thirds of America seeing it on social media before the game, then during the game, then the following Monday…the actual consumption is extraordinary.

At VaynerMedia, when we do a Super Bowl spot for a client, we do an enormous amount of social media creative pre- and post-game to support the commercial. One reason VaynerMedia has been doing so much Super Bowl ad work is that clients are realizing the socials outperform the Super Bowl, or extend the relevance of their brand to different consumer segmentations.

At the same time, with the Super Bowl TV ads, you’re betting on the fact that your ad will actually get seen, which is the biggest problem in media today: the opportunity to have it seen. Even at an $10 million+ price tag, I truly believe that Super Bowl commercials are a bargain and should cost way more than they do.

Why? Because they actually get consumed.

For traditional TV commercials, I wanna pay 20 cents on the dollar that the market’s charging, because I think that’s the actual value of the actual reach I’m getting, not the potential reach that GRPs are selling on. Look, I will buy radio and print ads tomorrow if that industry readjusts its pricing to match the reality - and this is the key term - actual reach vs. potential reach.

There are two types of consumer attention: underpriced and overpriced.

The Creative Is the Variable and Why Brands Keep Getting Burned

I’m a huge proponent of the Super Bowl, but it’s very high-risk, high-reward because of the creative variable. Still, I’m obsessed that creative is the variable of success in marketing, and I’m obsessed with creative.

The problem happens if your creative isn’t good. If the ad itself isn’t good, if the creative isn’t good, then the Super Bowl becomes the most overpriced ad. So the media spot is underpriced, but the creative has to hit to justify the spend.

The creative is still the variable of success. It still has to hit. The attention is there. The problem is that this is a selfish industry. A team will make an ad to win an award and get new business for themselves, not make an ad that sells stuff for their client, which is why more clients don’t do the Super Bowl. Maybe they’ve had too many bad experiences where they’ve spent the money.

The media (ad spot) was a good deal, but they wasted the money on a celebrity, or they wasted the money on a video that was done for the creative agency, not for the brand. You can waste $30 million between production, talent fees, and all the other stuff that NBC makes you buy when you do the Super Bowl.

But still, I think it’s the best ad. $10 million to get over 100 million Americans to watch? Are you kidding me? It’s a steal. You know what my problem is? If the 30-second video stinks, you just wasted $25 million because not only do you pay $10 for the media, you paid a ton for the production.

This is where modern creative risk mitigation actually lives.

Today, with interest graph algorithms, instead of putting months and months of research, effort, and resources into a TV commercial that people will most likely not watch, brands can put out content (aka ads) every day based on a hypothesis of what will work and get actual results to validate or invalidate their hypothesis. They can rely on reactions from the market, instead of ten people in a focus group.

For example, let’s say you’re leading marketing efforts for a large athletic clothing brand, and you want to make a TV commercial to get more moms across the US to buy your clothing. You can make 20, 30, 40+ different pieces of content/ads for narrow demographics of moms, post them across social media platforms, and see what happens. Observe what pieces of content perform better than the average on your account, see who ends up consuming the piece of content through post analytics, note what words and messaging catch attention, and use those learnings to help craft your higher-production, higher-budget commercials.

It’s similar to how stand-up comedians try out different material. They go in front of smaller crowds at a bunch of different comedy clubs, see what lines work and with whom they work, and use those learnings to make their next show even better. By the time they do a big Netflix comedy special, there’s very little guessing involved; they already know what to do.

Similarly, learnings from social media marketing can help brands mitigate risk on higher-production campaigns. I call this “marketing for the sake of better marketing.” You do actual marketing with the goal of building brand and sales through social media, and you also use those learnings from content to do even better marketing in the future.

The confusion is that companies approach these social media posts (again, which are advertisements) with a mindset of “test and learn,” “throw it against the wall and see what sticks,” or “spray and pray.” Just to remind you: This is marketing for the sake of better marketing.

And this is why the Super Bowl works when it works: the attention is guaranteed, and the media is underpriced. The brands that win are the ones that show up with creative that’s already been battle-tested in the real world, not guessed at in a boardroom.

Attention vs. Channels

This is why I talk a lot about being in the attention business over the social media business. The reason I’m interested in social media is because it has captured the attention of so many. I’m a social media guy, and I’m pushing for content on LinkedIn, Spotify, Facebook, Instagram, but I do believe in the Super Bowl.

Even social, at its best — with $10 million spent on Meta and TikTok perfectly — you still can’t get 100 million people to watch a 30-second video. If you told me that you have $25 million and you wanted to sell some stuff, I would look at Super Bowl commercials first — then I would look at Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube ads.

To be clear, every brand can waste $10 million on social media in five seconds. But the reason I like social media is when you do it well, the opportunity of the value is extraordinary, but the ability to do it poorly is extraordinary. If you treat a Facebook execution like a television ad, make one video, and spend $3 million pounding everyone with it, it will be rubbish.

What the Super Bowl Does for Brands

During the event, there are always a ton of people watching them, and even after the game, people love to look up Super Bowl commercials on YouTube and vote for their favorite ones. So it is not just attention. It is what you do with it.

We’ve done many Super Bowl ads, including for Duracell, Tubi, PepsiCo, and others, and it works for companies you know, and it works for companies you don’t. The companies you have never heard of before are gonna get awareness they never had before. A lot of people are about to discover them.

And then for brands that we know, like a Raisin Bran, it’s a relevance thing. Maybe you just haven’t thought about Raisin Bran in a while, but after their Super Bowl ad, maybe now you’re thinking about fiber. So it’s about either relevance, or it’s about broad awareness.

The Bigger Pattern

In the early 2000s, we had the “internet” Super Bowl. Just a couple of years ago, we had the “crypto” Super Bowl. Now we’re having “AI” Super Bowls. But regardless of the theme, or where the Super Bowl is watched, wherever the commercials are, that’s gonna play. The Super Bowl remains grossly underpriced.

And whether the game goes off of the network and goes to streaming or somewhere else, nobody is going to give up those economics. Because I do predict streaming services (Netflix or Amazon, maybe) will host the Super Bowl in the future. And maybe those more tech-forward companies will have a higher propensity to make biddable or real-time ad-buying options for people. In other words, I do think we will eventually see auction-based (maybe even blockchain-verified) Super Bowl advertising where pricing adjusts in real time based on actual eyeballs, engagement, and how close the game is

Regardless, the question becomes, when do more brands figure it out that the Super Bowl remains so underpriced?

The Operating System Behind “Relevance” in 2026

I look forward to the day in three years when I’ll say something different to what I’m saying here, because you have to move with the reality of the consumer, and that means changing your mind.

But today, I believe every fortune 500 company is massively under-invested in social media creative production at scale. They should be posting organically on seven or eight of the leading social networks to then watch that creative in action in real life and be prepared to use media dollars to amplify the winners.

I’ve studied the last 50 years of campaigns, and most fail. We all know that and that’s not to blame anyone. We’ve had incredible creatives and strategists. But we did not have the technology to mitigate the risk of opinion.

So here’s the era we’re in: The way the algorithms work is that there’s no algorithm. It’s just people and how they react to content, then the content keeps going based on that reality. And for the first time ever, we can actually measure relevance and consideration and views achieved, which the algorithm actually writes on. They’re written on relevance: Do a lot of people like this at scale? There’s a great misunderstanding of how these algorithms are written. This should be a real point. The algorithms are written for consumer relevance.

So, every brand should spend as much money as possible on creating as much content as possible. This is not slop or spray and pray. This is understanding the different consumer segmentations you’re trying to target, make content in social media creative form for the mediums, and post it.

When and if it achieves organic views, then you put working media on it.

The 20% Claim and the 2M to 40M Example

This is controversial but I believe it: Most brands in the Fortune 500 should spend 20% of their entire marketing budget on social media creative production. That’s a big number.

One consumer beauty company I know was spending $2 million a year on creative for organic social content. Not paid. Just IG posts, TikTok, tweets, Facebook, just posting.

We showed them examples from a quick-service restaurant (QSR) client of ours, and they are on the urge — or the 1-yard-line — of spending $40 million this year. That’s a profound shift.

What they will spend will amplify creative that is good. Not “good” by my opinion or a creative director’s opinion, not by AdAge or PR Week. It’s defined as “good” because the creative itself achieved views through a relevance framework.

How This Connects Back to the Super Bowl

My point of view to my clients is this: Do a Super Bowl commercial at the end of doing a year’s worth of great social creative, and take that and make the best you have for the Super Bowl ad.

And if I’m spending that kind of money for a brand, I’m buying a slot in the first half of the game, when viewership typically peaks. You don’t want to take the chance that the game gets out of hand in the second half. Now, don’t forget, if it’s a great game, the third and fourth quarter can get really interesting. So it runs the gambit, but if I’m the CMO, I’m going first or second quarter.

Believe it or not, I think that we’re within half a decade of a brand being smart enough to use a video they previously posted on a social network as their actual Super Bowl spot, black lines and all.

Live social shopping is gonna explode even more in 2026 and beyond.

Last year, Whatnot did billions in GMV, which is the total dollar value of all goods and services sold through an e-commerce platform or marketplace, yet many people have never heard of that platform. I can’t believe how big an opportunity this is. It’s real now, but it’s going to be very real over the next 5–10 years.

Globally, live commerce is already on track to be a trillion-dollar industry, driven largely by China, where live shopping accounts for roughly 15–20% of all e-commerce today. In the U.S., we’re still early, but that’s exactly the point. According to multiple industry estimates, U.S. live commerce GMV is projected to grow at 30–40%+ annually over the next several years as platforms, logistics, and creator tools mature.

TikTok Shop is the real player, and Whatnot is a monster. eBay Live is going very strong. Twitch just launched their shopping. There’s an incredible app you should all look into called District, which is like the Shopify of live shopping. This ecosystem is building.

To put real numbers behind this:

• TikTok Shop crossed tens of billions in annual GMV globally, with the U.S. becoming one of its fastest-growing regions

• Whatnot has become one of the largest live-commerce platforms in North America, especially in collectibles, trading cards, sneakers, fashion, and niche hobbies

• eBay Live has leaned into high-trust categories like luxury watches, handbags, and trading cards, where authentication and real-time Q&A matter

• Twitch’s move into shopping isn’t random; Amazon owns Twitch, and Amazon understands that attention + creator trust converts better than static listings

Anyone here running a company should be spending an enormous amount of time figuring out their live shopping strategy, as well as their GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) strategy too. If you don’t do that, you’re setting yourself up for a very challenging 2027, 2028 reality.

Live shopping really is QVC, but on social. The level of opportunity for every individual and business, because of the way the algos are in social right now, is profound. Because when a person or a company goes live, they will find audiences. The algo will bring you to new people in the feed.

This Is Happening Now

Attention is the ultimate asset, and these social platforms have the attention.

Friends, we are selling koi on these platforms already. Think about that for a second. Not just merch, not necessarily hype products, not just digital-only assets. Living, breathing koi.

We’re seeing live commerce work across categories that traditionally required physical presence or trust:

• Luxury handbags and watches

• Fresh seafood and specialty foods

• Plants, reptiles, and live animals

• Home goods and furniture

• Auto parts and tools

• Education, collectibles, and hobby gear

If it can be explained, demonstrated, authenticated, and shipped, it can be sold live.

There could be more stuff sold through live shopping than is bought in regular e-commerce. There are literally everyday people becoming TikTok affiliates, selling on live shopping, and changing their lives. Most people aren’t destined to be a famous influencer. But they are destined to be someone who’s good at selling stuff, and they’re going to change the course of their lives.

The fastest-growing cohort is everyday operators. TikTok affiliates, small-store owners, resellers, and subject-matter experts who might never build a massive following, but who can convert attention into cash. For many of them, a single successful live stream can outperform weeks or months of traditional content posting.

With VeeFriends, we did almost $200,000 in revenue in three hours. Friends, please get serious about live social shopping, because the QVC-ification of social media is here. It’s coming, and it’s gonna come harder. By the way, this has been happening in China for ~eight years.

What Can Be Sold (Almost Anything)

Anything can be sold if:

• You actually understand the product

• You know how to communicate value in real time

• You can fulfill properly

People are wondering: What do I sell? What do I do? Where do I do it?

You need to devote five hours to learning about live shopping. Google it, use ChatGPT, study it. We live in an AI world. Any question you have, put that into ChatGPT. Ask the questions: Where do I get the product? How do I ship the stuff?

You could buy anything at wholesale that has a higher retail value and go on TikTok Shop and Whatnot and sell it on live shopping. Go hard, and I believe you can make $1 million in profit a year within 24 months.

Now, the trick is actually providing entertainment. There are so many ways to do this, but it all boils down to one question: What value are you bringing to the audience?

This will also hit Main Street. If you’re a normal store in a small town in New Jersey or California, on Wednesday at 3PM, there’s nothing going on. But the fact that you can turn your little boutique into a studio and turn on live shopping is huge.

For small businesses, this matters because foot traffic is declining while digital attention is consolidating. Retail is no longer about location alone; it’s about distribution. Live shopping lets a local store instantly become national, even global, without new rent, staff, or inventory expansion.

Why This Beats Everything Else

If you ask me right now, out of all the optionality in the world of how to make money in the next five years in America, live shopping is at the top of my list. It’s such an opportunity that live social shopping is the only potential thing that Amazon should be worried about.

Amazon wins on convenience and logistics. Live shopping wins on emotion, trust, and entertainment. That’s the wedge, because Amazon can copy features, but it can’t (yet) replicate real-time human interaction at scale without fundamentally changing its model.

Six years ago, I was yelling at everybody to be on TikTok. Now everybody cries to me and says, “Gary, I should have listened.” Now I’m yelling at you to do social shopping. Either you’re gonna listen or you’re gonna cry about not doing it.

Commerce-tainment: Why It Works

Commerce-tainment is commerce and entertainment. It’s basically QVC on social media.

The difference now is the algorithm brings the shopping to you. You’re scrolling and boom, there’s a TikTok live served straight to your phone. The algorithm knows your interests and feeds you accordingly.

This is the key difference versus traditional e-commerce or even influencer marketing. When you go live, you are no longer limited to your follower count. Platforms actively push live content because it increases session time, comments, and purchases. That means discovery is built into the system. The algorithm is incentivized to find buyers for you.

Attention is the ultimate asset, and these platforms have the attention. Human behavior likes to buy in real time. It’s frictionless. It’s convenient. You’re almost paying for an experience.

You know how you might spend $150 to go see a comedy show? You don’t take anything physical home. With live shopping, you get the experience plus the product. With live social shopping, people are buying things in a subconscious form of a tip for the entertainment they’re getting.

Whoever Brings The Most Value, Wins

Many of you may know that I have a regular Q&A series called Tea with GaryVee where members of my community can join me live on Whatnot to ask me business questions or advice. If you’ve watched the show, you’ll know that I also feature a variety of different collectibles from my company, VeeFriends. Everything from stickers, to collectible card packs, mugs, T-shirts, hats and more gets added to my Whatnot storefront for people to browse and shop throughout the show.

On the one hand, I’m providing insane value: an hour packed with tactical advice on business, life, and career. On the other hand, I’m educating my audience on the VeeFriends IP, all while giving them the opportunity to shop. I’m doing commerce while entertaining through providing value. Earlier this year, I did a 7-hour livestream on Whatnot where we sold $40K worth of t-shirts in two hours. If I had done my best social media, non-live shopping advertising, we would have made maybe $3K in sales. Please understand, this is real.

Here’s another scenario. Imagine you’re a physical trainer. You can go on Whatnot or TikTok and start a live stream giving people tips on health and fitness, but then, maybe you add some merch into the mix. Maybe you have some hats or some hoodies, or maybe you have a special fascia scraper that you use while demonstrating different exercises. You’re leveraging your fitness expertise to build awareness and entertain, but you’re doing it on a commerce platform.

As long as you have value to deliver and a product to sell, you’re doing yourself a huge disservice if you don’t get started with live social shopping today.

Why Does Commerce-tainment Work?

Why does it work? Because human behavior likes to buy in real time. For example, I’m someone who is extremely disciplined and I don’t generally like to buy stuff, and yet even I have bought things on Whatnot and TikTok Shop in the live experience because of the momentum. I’m already there, I see the product, I like it, I buy it. It’s frictionless, convenient, and you’re almost paying for an experience.

Think of it this way. What do you get when you go to a standup comedy show or a concert or a sporting event? What do you take home? Nothing physical, but you’re paying for the entertainment experience. I believe the same thing is true of commerce-tainment, only you get the experience plus the physical product. There’s a subconscious underlying layer of the entertainment value that’s going on, and I think the hype and the excitement of purchasing live cannot be underestimated.

It’s enjoyable; it’s a more fun way to shop than to see a picture in your Instagram feed. I could make an ad saying, “VeeFriends is the next Pokémon. Get in early! I’m GaryVee and I’m telling you right now, you’re going to regret not buying this for $40.”

That’s a good ad; it will do fine, but I’m telling you that it would do even better in real time as commerce-tainment because I can also interact with the audience. I can answer their questions. I can respond in real time to their concerns. I can offer behind-the-scenes alpha on the VeeFriends IP for my community. I can bring on exciting guests and do spontaneous giveaways.

It all fuels the shopping experience, and whether you’re a content creator with a CPG business, a small business or a big brand, you’re losing out on a ridiculous arbitrage if you don’t jump on live social shopping right now.

Where This Is Going

In my brain, 20% of all social media content will be live shopping. It’s not there yet, but it will be. The reason I think some people are slow to this trend is the AI convo is so important and has sucked up the oxygen for some of them.

But with live social shopping, people can buy from other humans. You can ask the seller a question live and they might answer it, vs. a banner ad or image that sends me to a landing page? It’s a different game now.

Brick-and-mortar rents are harder to justify, and retail traffic is changing. In five years, you’ll walk down a busy street and half the employees will be doing commerce-tainment. Stores will turn into studios because they have to.

Meta isn’t going to sit around. Google will get into the game, as will Amazon, Walmart, YouTube, and X. This is coming.

Half a trillion dollars worth of stuff is sold through live shopping in China. That’s happening now in the U.S. and the West. Live social shopping is gonna eat up the world.

Final Wake-Up Call

This is a next-36-months skill. Just like learning paid social in 2015 or TikTok in 2019, the advantage goes to the people who experiment before the playbooks are obvious.

So many of you will not become the influencer you might want to be, but you have a different talent. Maybe you are a great salesperson. Then you should really learn and consider this world.

Start a Whatnot account or go live on TikTok. Don’t have a product? Start selling stuff from your house, because the upside in the next 36 months is extraordinary.

Live social shopping is a new distribution layer for commerce, powered by algorithms, human behavior, and entertainment — and it’s still massively underpriced.