• by Colin Kirkland , February 13, 2025

With social-commerce growth expected to boom over the next year, creators are becoming even more integral to brands' strategic investments in live-stream shopping and social media shopping platforms like TikTok Shop, YouTube Shopping, Pinterest, Snapchat, and Meta’s family of apps.

At the start of the month, influencer platform Mavely was acquired by software company Later for $250 million, highlighting an ever-growing desire in the industry for power in the creator space.

After speaking with Later CEO Scott Sutton about the importance of data for marketers utilizing creators in their social-commerce efforts, MediaPost was eager to catch up with Mavely about how the acquisition is impacting the company's vast creator base.

Last Thursday at SoCom, the first dedicated social-commerce conference in the U.S., MediaPost spoke with Mavely’s Vice President of Business Development Usaid Khan. Prior to his position at the influencer company, Khan helped to build Amazon's livestream shopping features.

MediaPost and Khan discussed the promise of "everyday influencers," being bullish on social commerce, Mavely's recent acquisition, why Reddit may be a promising focus for creator-based ad dollars and more.

This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.

MediaPost: What kinds of businesses are you helping Mavely partner with?

Usaid Khan: I am responsible for handling our partnerships with social platforms and other tools Mavely's creators are using -- for example, Canva for their templates, Button for deep-linking, Beehive for newsletters. We want partnerships with all of these creator-focused companies so we can offer them to our creators.

MP: You mentioned "everyday influencers" during your panel earlier, as did Later's Scott Sutton during a recent chat with MediaPost. Why are they a main focus at Mavely?

Khan: There are a ton of people in our space that are catering toward the biggest influencers. They're putting all their attention on the creators with the largest followings, and there's a world for that.

But our belief is that everyone can be some form of creator. Even with a very small following, you have some level of influence on your audience. We want to make sure we're there to cater to that niche.

MP: What's the lowest follower count an influencer can have for Mavely to work with them?

Khan: We have actually never defined that. Because there aren’t guardrails around the follower count in order to be on Mavely. You could join and start engaging with brands, creating links and earning commissions from brands today -- hence, “everyday influencers.”

MP: How has your experience helping to launch Amazon Live informed your job at Mavely?

Khan: Amazon is huge -- it's very established. But during my time there, Amazon Live was still something so new and fresh -- it was this startup experience at a monster of a company.

I learned what it takes to push through -- testing, iterating, learning, adjusting etc. Beyond that, I became familiar with the creator-focused, social commerce industry around Amazon Live. And that's obviously my world now.

MP: What do you think of the state of live shopping in the U.S. right now?

Khan: There is a long way to go. Livestream shopping in the U.S. has very much been inspired by East Asia, right? And U.S. companies that were live shopping early on would just copy everything directly from that region.

But I don't think it works like that. In the U.S. we have so many alternatives to live shopping, whereas in China there are very few options for entertainment. 

The other factor is that in China, livestream shopping is fully integrated into the social-commerce experience when it comes to buying anything, even groceries. It’s all in one place -- one super app.

MP: That is not the case over here.

Khan. Yeah, I have never heard of competition for attention as a major detractor for the popularity of live shopping in the U.S.

MP: What are your thoughts on the Black Friday success of TikTok Shop this year?

Khan: It was great because there is still so much opportunity in the U.S. But I'm getting the sense that they're still figuring it out with regard to U.S. consumers.

MP: How has Later's acquisition of Mavely affected your job?

Khan: Well, we're only about 30 days in, but overall, zooming out of my job, it's the perfect marriage.

Historically, Later has been focused on upper-funnel creator engagement -- impressions, brand awareness  -- whereas Mavely is all about bottom-of-the-funnel performance affiliate marketing.

It's like smashing those two worlds together and offering both brands and creators a full-funnel offering. We can get them brand dollars for an awareness-focused campaign, and then track it through Mavely affiliate links as well.

MP: Do you think social commerce will pave the way for live shopping in the U.S.?

Khan: One hundred percent. There has been incredible growth over the last few years, but I would say we're still just getting started.

And I think the Mavely/Later acquisition encapsulates that mindset. We're very bullish on where this can go and what this is going to be for the whole ecosystem.

MP: Is social commerce becoming a main priority when setting up partnerships with Mavely?

Khan: Absolutely. We want to be everywhere the consumer is along their shopping journey. So we want to make sure that we are partnering with the creators and companies that are part of that journey == including social platforms, where customers are consuming social commerce content.

MP: What is one of the most promising under-the-radar creator platforms?

UK: I'm not sure if I would classify it as a creator platform, but Reddit. It's a super interesting platform because consumers go there to consume content, and the people serving the content, to me, are creators.

They may not be traditional creators, but they are informing decisions for people to consume and then make their own decisions on whether they want to engage in something. For example, if you Google anything today, one of the top results is always Reddit.

People trust Reddit because it has that authenticity factor, and it will be interesting to see if Reddit chooses to partake in the shopping journey.