Influencer Marketing Grows Up | AdExchanger

Influencer marketing has shifted from informal selection based on follower counts to a performance channel with creators functioning as media channels. Creators maintain loyal audiences across multiple platforms, and their name, image, and likeness can extend into digital, podcasts, out of home, and CTV. Brands and holding companies increasingly invest in creator platforms, including Publicis’s acquisition of Influential. Influential integrates creator campaigns into broader marketing stacks using identity data and shared measurement approaches. Creator spend is managed with test-and-control studies, sales lift proof, marketing mix model inputs, and footfall attribution for retail and QSR. AI supports audience understanding, creator-brand matching, brand safety scanning, and linking organic and paid impressions for cross-channel comparison.

"Influencer marketing used to be the squishy line on a media plan. Marketers would choose who to work with based on follower counts and gut feel. But now influencer is a performance channel - and creators are media channels in their own right, with loyal audiences, CPMs and measurement expectations to match."

"Creators are on multiple social platforms and their name, image and likeness can be extended to digital, podcasts, out of home and even CTV. "That person becomes an industry unto themselves for their community," Detert says."

"Influential is now plugged into Publicis's broader stack, including Epsilon's identity data, so that creator campaigns can be planned and measured alongside other media. Rather than treating creator spend as a separate, unaccountable bucket, it helps marketers manage creator campaigns using the same machinery that supports digital and TV: test-and-control studies to prove sales lift, data that can feed into marketing mix models and footfall attribution for QSR and retail."

"AI is a big part of how that happens. Influential leans on AI to understand audiences, match brands with the right creators, scan content and timelines for brand safety and suitability issues and tie organic and paid impressions together so creator activity can be compared to other channels."

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