The Drum Live: Rio Ferdinand wants brands to back a new era of social media

Despite WeAre8 being in its infancy, broadcaster and former England footballer Rio Ferdinand was one of its first major investors. At The Drum Live event in London this week, he spoke candidly on why he backed the startup as his own concerns about the toxicity of social platforms grow.

• WeAre8 will pay you to watch ads in the name of saving the planet

“You see a lot of kids nowadays and the trend is to post and delete, post and delete. They are so aware of people’s opinions and judgments,” he said. But with WeAre8 Ferdinand believes it’s a space where users can “be a bit more normal”. Though he’s still active on X and Instagram, the ex-Manchester United star posts with increasing regularity on WeAre8, sharing the daily mundanities of life from days in the office to trips on the train.

Fennessy was less diplomatic about the negative impact she believes the more established social firms make on society as well as advertiser budgets. “I studied those algorithms [on social platforms] for years, and they absolutely divide us,” the tech entrepreneur suggested. “Twitter wants to keep scrolling to serve your ads that get really low engagement and click-through rate.”

According to Fennessy, the current social mode also underserves brands that spend huge amounts of money for poor engagement. “We’re going to wake up in six to 12 months’ time and go, Oh my god, how could we have put $1 with Meta when we know they say only deliver 0.04% engagement rate and they fuel climate misinformation and teen suicide - what the fuck was our industry doing?” With WeAre8, she claims it can achieve 67 times more attention on an ad spot.

Brands, including Lush and Dove, have been outspoken on the dangers of social media, with the former committing to cut all spending with them for the reasons Fennessy outlined.

But beyond the morality of big social, it was the ad dollars going directly to charities that sold Ferdinand on the project. “People need help more than ever before, there are more foodbanks than you’ve ever seen,” he went on. Ferdinand was disheartened by the lack of sustained impact he or his fellow footballers could make to changing society or influencing policy.

“We go to charity nights, dinners, auctions, we go to an afternoon at a youth club, etc, but we are just for a snapshot or a picture, and then we’re gone,” he says. “It’s not sustainable, it doesn’t last, we don’t impact for a big period of time.”

He pointed to Marcus Rashford’s free school meals campaign. “What Marcus did was amazing, but that was a moment. Is it still going on now? And that’s where I think WeAre8 sits; it can help that problem. It can be sustained over a period of time,” he said.

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What’s next for WeAre8?

The platform currently boasts 500,000 users and is in the process of scaling. Fennessy teased that the app was about to launch a plug-in that would allow publishers to host the WeAre8 ad donation system on their own sites. This would help the business capture 80 million people watching ads, Fennessy explained.

“So, the publishers will move from a world of getting 20 cents CPM and being forced to shove millions of impressions out to people and annoy the crap out of them to getting $2 for every video view that they have on the platform,” she added.

Up next on the app’s development will also be the introduction of a conversation page allowing users to chat with their friends. This is in answer to the fact that social algorithms no longer prioritize content from the user’s social circle.

The Drum Live brought together top brands, agencies and media owners over two days of panels and fireside chats. Catch up on the headlines here.