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- Influence Weekly #361
Influence Weekly #361
Nii Ahene
November 01, 2024
Spotlight Stories
Over 90% Of Brands Plan To Boost Creator Budgets In 2025
Start Local, Think Big: 13 Industry Leaders Share Their Small Business Influencer Success Tips
Athlete Influencer Olivia Dunne Joins Forces With Jake Paul’s Brand W
Fashion Influencer Carla Rockmore Is Launching Signature Women Collection With QVC
Great Reads
Over 90% of brands plan to increase their creator marketing budgets or expand creators’ roles in their marketing strategies for 2025, according to new research from LTK and Northwestern University’s Retail Analytics Council. The study surveyed 185 marketing leaders and found that 41% of brands now allocate at least half of their digital marketing budget to creators, up 14% from the previous year.
Brands are using creator content across multiple channels beyond social media, with content marketing, sponsorships, connected TV, display advertising, and affiliate marketing being the top areas. Social media advertising remains significant with 82% of brands incorporating creator content into social ads.
AI is increasingly used to identify potential creator partnerships. The creator marketing industry is projected to reach $24 billion by the end of 2024 as creators’ multi-channel engagement capabilities continue to drive increased budgets for creator campaigns.
As the global influencer market projects an unprecedented $139 billion by 2031, small businesses face mounting pressure to stand out on social media with limited budgets. Thirteen industry leaders share insights on maximizing influencer partnerships, emphasizing strategies like prioritizing authenticity over follower counts, treating relationships as long-term collaborations, focusing on resonance within niche communities, and aligning values for genuine advocacy.
Key tactics include identifying creators who organically use the product, negotiating content rights for amplification, testing diverse content formats, setting clear goals, and viewing influencers as stakeholders. With 80% of consumers citing user-generated content as influential on purchases, leveraging the right creators can drive meaningful results even on modest budgets.
Instagram is testing a new feature called “Reels Tips” that provides creators with detailed performance insights on what makes their Reels content successful. The feature displays contextual notes within the Reels feed, breaking down elements like engagement rates, view counts, and interaction levels that contribute to a Reel’s performance.
Creators can access these insights by tapping prompts within the feed. As Reels generates over 200 billion daily views across Instagram and Facebook, this feature aims to help creators optimize their content for better ranking on Instagram’s algorithm, which now shows over 50% AI-recommended posts. The “Reels Tips” feature is currently in internal testing at Meta and may be limited to Creator accounts when publicly released.
Campaign Insights
Athlete influencer Olivia Dunne has acquired a co-ownership stake in Jake Paul’s personal care brand W. Dunne, with over 13 million followers across social media, joins an ownership team that includes Paul, MMA fighter Sean O’Malley, and rapper Rubi Rose. W features affordable Gen Z-targeted products like body wash and deodorant.
Dunne’s role will involve content creation and brand development as an ambassador. The partnership adds to her existing collaborations with brands like Nautica and American Eagle. W recently raised $14 million at a $150 million valuation as it expands its retail presence and product line.
Fashion influencer Carla Rockmore, known as the “Real Life Carrie Bradshaw,” is launching an exclusive apparel collection with QVC on November 1st. The collection celebrates bold colors, patterns, and versatile pieces catered to women over 50. With prices ranging from $49 to $115 and inclusive sizing from XXS to 5X, it aligns with QVC’s “Age of Possibility” campaign targeting the growing demographic of women over 50.
Rockmore will promote the launch through QVC’s platforms, including a live stream and social media takeovers. The collaboration aims to inspire style experimentation and self-expression for mature women by leveraging Rockmore’s creativity and influential presence.
YouTube has partnered with influencer marketing company Gushcloud to improve brand and creator collaborations in Southeast Asia through a new Creator Solutions program. The program aims to boost monetization for mid-tier creators with 50,000 to 300,000 subscribers by facilitating better brand deals and tracking performance metrics like sales.
As a partner, Gushcloud will manage campaign execution and creator relationships. The company sees the massive Indonesian market as a strategic testing ground for rolling out the initiative. Gushcloud executives believe the program can prove return on investment for brands historically challenged to measure results from influencer campaigns in the region.
However, initial hurdles include overcoming creator skepticism from previous negative experiences with multi-channel networks and improving creators’ business acumen. Overall, Gushcloud is optimistic about the program’s potential to drive creator economy growth across Southeast Asia.
Samsung has partnered with luxury real estate content creator Enes Yilmazer to showcase its new All-in-One LED IAC display in high-end residential settings. Yilmazer demonstrated the 130-inch direct-view LED display during a tour of a $30 million Los Angeles home.
The system features LED HDR technology, 500 nits of brightness for natural lighting visibility, quick installation, and customization options. Samsung positions the product for various content types like movies, TV shows, and digital art, targeting the growing luxury goods market which reached $354.81 billion in 2023 revenues with Gen Z comprising a significant buyer segment.
More CPG startups are partnering with retail store influencers who showcase products at specific chains like Costco, Target, and Walmart. These influencers post grocery hauls and product features, highlighting where items are located in-store. Brands view this as an authentic way to drive awareness and sales velocity at retail partners. Sweety Ice Cream worked with Costco influencers for a new product launch, resulting in selling out within three weeks.
Nixie Sparkling Water leverages Sprouts-focused influencers around new releases to bridge online and in-store marketing. Mid-Day Squares adjusts sales forecasts based on these influencer campaigns, seeing upticks at retailers like Target. While ROI is less immediate than digital ads, brands find the tactic helpful for building retail relationships and providing a clear call-to-action to shoppers.
YouTube is launching its Shopping affiliate program in India, enabling eligible creators to earn revenue by tagging products from partners Flipkart and Myntra in their videos. The move capitalizes on YouTube’s thriving creator economy in India, with over 110,000 channels exceeding 100,000 subscribers. Research shows Indian viewers find YouTube creators more trustworthy than celebrities for product recommendations.
The program integrates with YouTube’s existing monetization options and provides creators additional opportunities across formats like Shorts and live streams as YouTube’s Connected TV viewership in India quadruples. With brands projected to allocate up to 30% of marketing budgets to influencers by 2028, the affiliate program aligns with India’s rapidly growing influencer marketing industry.
Interesting People
From tech sales to culinary influencer, Andy Hay has carved out a successful niche with his “Andy’s East Coast Kitchen” brand. He leveraged his MasterChef Canada appearance and the COVID-19 lockdown to build a following on Instagram and TikTok, sharing highly curated food content.
Andy’s content strategy blends data insights with his intuition for audience tastes, producing a high volume of recipes filmed three times weekly. His partnership with Viral Nation has helped scale his seven-figure business beyond influencer marketing towards celebrity status. Andy’s mission is making cooking more approachable while building passive income streams like cookbooks. His advice: focus on providing authentic value tailored to where your audience congregates online.
Forbes has released its annual Top 50 Creator list for 2024, revealing key trends in the booming creator economy. YouTuber MrBeast leads the rankings with $85 million in earnings, while the combined audience of top creators grew to 2.7 billion followers across major platforms.
Notable highlights include creators establishing full production companies, diversifying across platforms, securing mainstream media deals, capitalizing on new opportunities like college athlete sponsorships, and streaming platforms competing for top talent with lucrative contracts. With a projected $720 million in collective earnings, the list underscores how creators are transcending social media to build independent business empires and multi-channel media brands.
The Sociable Society is an influencer marketing agency aiming to safeguard creators’ long-term growth and success. Founded by Jay Kent-Hume and Emily Fonda, it operates two divisions - creator management focused on talent representation, and brand partnerships for influencer marketing campaigns. With over 200 creators on its roster and plans to grow to 500 within two years, the agency emphasizes transparency through clear contracts and comprehensive reporting.
Beyond traditional metrics like reach and engagement, The Sociable Society measures campaign success holistically, considering factors like content quality, audience relevance and sales impact. The agency has driven notable wins for brands like Tangle Teezer’s North American expansion, as well as propelling individual creators’ growth and monetization journeys.
To nurture clients, the agency empowers managers to build personal investment in their creators’ development. Looking ahead, it aims to expand its Creator Growth Division for affiliate marketing, and increase its event presence. The founders are passionate about bringing more consistency to creator contracts industry-wide. With the influencer marketing space still nascent, The Sociable Society views it as an opportunity to help shape best practices.
TikTok Shop is emerging as a potential rival to traditional e-commerce platforms like Amazon. An entrepreneur named Ivan Bagaybagayan has launched an agency called TikTok Shop Insiders to help brands capitalize on viral video commerce on TikTok Shop.
His agency provides services like product listing optimization, affiliate management, and paid advertising. Drawing from his previous experience scaling brands on TikTok Shop, Ivan sees the platform’s seamless integration of content discovery and purchasing as transformative for e-commerce.
With its systematic approach to onboarding brands, optimizing campaigns through data analysis, and incentivizing top creators, TikTok Shop Insiders has already taken several brands to six-figure monthly sales within weeks. As TikTok’s parent company ByteDance expands e-commerce globally, Ivan believes platforms like TikTok Shop represent the future of social commerce, with the potential to eclipse Amazon’s current dominance.
Fitness model and entrepreneur Whitney Johns reveals how she shifted from aesthetics-focused content to providing value through wellness programs and a supplement line aligned with her “movement is medicine” philosophy.
Despite past challenges like online criticism, Johns emphasizes authenticity, entertaining content, and calculated brand partnerships for success in the creator economy. She offers a wellness retreat in Greece, exemplifying her “work hard, play hard” approach, and advises aspiring creators to find inspiration while staying true to their unique voice.
Industry News
Popcorn Growth, a TikTok-first marketing agency, is taking a data-driven approach to influencer marketing, focusing on engagement metrics like saves and shares rather than traditional measures like likes and follower counts. The agency’s founder, Sheryl Xue H Teo, a former JPMorgan analyst, aims to bring Wall Street-style analysis to social media marketing. Popcorn Growth activates 50 to 100 influencers monthly for each brand, treating creators as one-stop creative houses.
The agency’s analytical approach extends to measuring campaign success, prioritizing brand awareness and audience connection over immediate sales conversion. With a focus on sustainable, long-term growth, Popcorn Growth has attracted major brands seeking to modernize their social media presence while maintaining brand safety.
YouTube Q3 2024 ad revenue rose 12% to $8.92 billion, beating Wall Street estimates, as the world’s biggest video streaming platform continues double-digit growth. YouTube’s total revenue from ads and subscriptions surpassed $50 billion over the past 4 quarters for the first time, averaging over $12.5 billion per quarter.
YouTube recently announced new features like organizing creator content into seasons and episodes, extending the video length limit on YouTube Shorts to 3 minutes, and integrating Google’s Veo AI for video creation tools. The strong results showcase YouTube’s momentum and parent company Alphabet’s innovation focus, especially in AI. Despite already large numbers, YouTube maintains impressive growth through platform enhancements catering to creators and viewers.
TikTok is expanding access to its STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) content feed to all users in the U.S., U.K., and Ireland, moving beyond just targeting teens. The educational feed, previously defaulted for users under 18, will now be a standard offering across these markets with an opt-out option. Since its launch, TikTok has seen an 18% increase in STEM videos which have amassed 200 million views.
The company aims to provide a space for learning, inspiration and enrichment around STEM topics while planning to add local language support. This follows TikTok’s discussions about the STEM feed in U.S. Congressional hearings as a response to concerns about the platform’s impact on young users. The expansion builds on the feed’s popularity after recent rollouts in Europe and Canada.
The article discusses the unique approach of UK talent agency BNOC (Big Name on Campus) towards influencer marketing. Founded by industry veteran Maya Orr, BNOC focuses on aligning influencers’ values with those of the brands they represent, rather than solely relying on traditional metrics like follower counts or engagement rates.
The agency believes that shared values between influencers and brands lead to more genuine and effective campaign results, resonating better with audiences who increasingly value authenticity and purpose-driven partnerships.
BNOC’s strategy involves carefully vetting influencers for qualities like authenticity, commitment to their craft, and alignment with ethical principles, prioritizing long-term impact over short-term engagement metrics. The article explores how BNOC aims to differentiate itself in a saturated market by fostering values-led influence and creating sustainable, meaningful collaborations between brands and influencers.
Select Management Group, a digital talent management firm, has strengthened its bi-coastal presence by promoting Caroline Nardilla to Partner. With over 12 years of experience, Nardilla pivoted from traditional entertainment to digital content creation in the early stages.
After establishing herself in Los Angeles, she relocated to New York in 2018 to launch Select’s East Coast office, giving her unique operational insights. In her new role, Nardilla will focus on talent management while taking on additional leadership responsibilities, including building a team and ensuring the NYC office has equivalent resources to the LA headquarters.
She aims to bridge the gap between digital and traditional entertainment, as exemplified by Select’s recent success with the Hulu series “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.” The company prioritizes authentic partnerships and sustainable growth over platform ubiquity. Nardilla is also implementing the Select Impact program, addressing diversity, mentorship, and wellness in the creator economy through the expanding East Coast operations.
As an insurance industry veteran, James Moran has created Sociable, a first-of-its-kind insurance platform aimed at protecting content creators from social media hacking and account breaches. Launching in early 2025, Sociable offers coverage across up to 25 platforms and uses AI to prevent account takeovers. With social media hacking costing over $3 billion annually, James recognized this underserved market after his daughter’s Instagram was hacked at age 12.
Sociable combines insurance principles with security features like biometrics and encryption. Priced at around 2% of creators’ earnings, it promises rapid account recovery in contrast to platforms’ sluggish response times. Already securing insurance backing, Sociable is preparing for an ongoing cybersecurity arms race as it builds partnerships with major platforms. James ultimately aims to end social media hacking through Sociable’s innovative solutions.
This Berlin startup, Passionfroot, just raised $3.8 million in seed funding to solve a critical payment processing challenge for business-focused creators. The platform enables creators to build digital storefronts showcasing their ad inventory and automates scheduling and payments for brand partnerships, charging a 15% fee.
With brands projected to spend over $7 billion on influencer marketing in 2024, Passionfroot’s turnkey solution streamlining the payment process is well-timed. The funding round was led by Supernode Global and included participation from notable investors like Sequoia and Accel’s Scout Fund. Passionfroot aims to empower the new generation of creator entrepreneurs with tools to effectively monetize their content across newsletters, YouTube, LinkedIn and other channels.
JoinBrands, a creator marketplace managing over 150,000 creators and 10,000 brand partnerships, is expanding globally into the UK, Canada, Australia, and Germany. The self-service platform has distributed over $8 million to creators, receiving 500 new creator applications daily. It maintains strict geographical requirements, ensuring creators produce promotional content in the markets where brands sell products.
JoinBrands aims to facilitate localized creator-brand relationships, offering a cost-effective alternative to traditional content production methods. Key metrics for success include creator earnings across markets and platform usage by U.S. brands tapping international creators. New features include TikTok GMV tracking and a “recurring creators” program allowing brands to hire creators as spokespeople.
E-commerce agency Emplicit is emerging as a key player in helping brands navigate TikTok Shop, the social platform’s fast-growing retail venture. According to Head of TikTok Strategy Rafay Hussain, the platform is revolutionizing how consumers discover and purchase products.
Unlike Amazon, where shoppers search for specific items, TikTok creates spontaneous demand through short-form video content. Emplicit’s strategy focuses on three traffic sources: influencer partnerships, paid advertising, and brand-created content.The agency primarily serves Amazon sellers expanding to TikTok Shop, with about 80% seeking full-service support.
Notably, Emplicit’s approach prioritizes engagement over follower count, often compensating creators through performance-based commission structures rather than flat fees.With only 37,000 sellers on TikTok Shop compared to Amazon’s 9.7 million, Hussain suggests early adopters have a significant advantage, with some brands scaling to millions in monthly revenue within months.
Bluesky, the decentralized social media platform, has raised $15 million in Series A funding. The funding will support community growth, improved safety measures, and expanding the developer ecosystem. Bluesky plans to introduce a subscription model for premium features like higher video quality and customization.
It will also implement payment services enabling direct creator monetization, though specifics are still being developed. Bluesky aims to provide an open alternative to traditional social networks while avoiding cryptocurrencies or ads. The platform has grown to over 13 million users across multiple countries. Reactions are mixed, with some concerns about the need to generate revenue impacting Bluesky’s principles.
Ramdam, an AI-powered content creation platform, has raised $3.15 million in seed funding to expand its automated creator advertising service that connects brands with creators across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
The Paris-based startup uses AI to match advertisers with top-performing creators, automating the entire process from creative briefs to posting, contracts, and invoicing. Since launching in 2023, Ramdam has built a network of over 50,000 creators in 50 countries and serves over 100 brand clients. The funding will fuel Ramdam’s expansion across the U.S. and Europe as brands increasingly invest in creator marketing.
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TikTok Shop’s US operations head Nicolas Le Bourgeois outlined the platform’s ambitious e-commerce strategy as it marks its first year in the American market. Speaking at a company event in New York, the former Amazon executive emphasized TikTok’s unique positioning in product discovery rather than competing directly with traditional retailers.
The platform is heavily investing in livestream shopping infrastructure, including studios in Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York. It’s also building out its logistics network with six US warehouses to ensure fast delivery times.
Le Bourgeois highlighted the platform’s focus on creator partnerships and agency relationships to drive sales, noting that many content creators have found unexpected success as product sellers. Despite looming regulatory challenges, including a potential forced sale deadline of January 19th, TikTok Shop continues aggressive expansion plans, aiming to replicate the success of its sister app Douyin, which generates hundreds of billions in annual sales in China.
As the 2024 election nears, both the Kamala Harris and Donald Trump campaigns have mobilized massive networks of influencers and content creators to amplify their messages and encourage voter turnout. The Harris campaign has assembled around 270 creators, providing them with graphics, audio clips, and suggested messaging to share on their platforms.
They are also organizing opportunities for influencers to travel to battleground states for events and door-knocking. Meanwhile, conservative influencers affiliated with groups like the Heritage Foundation have strategized on synchronizing content focused on issues like immigration and the economy.
With combined followings in the tens of millions, these influencer armies could be pivotal in swaying voters and driving turnout in key states. As the campaigns enter the final stretch, the effectiveness of their influencer strategies may determine the outcome of this highly contested election.
Valeria Lipovetsky, a highly successful influencer earning $13.5 million from her social media platforms, has launched an online academy called Creator Method. For an annual $3,000 membership fee, students gain access to over 80 pre-recorded video lessons, weekly video calls with Lipovetsky and her team, and private group chats. The program aims to teach aspirants the methods Lipovetsky has used to build her influencer career, without offering any formal certification.
At the program’s inaugural in-person event in Miami, around 50 women in their 30s gathered for a conference-style day of panels, Q&As, content creation sessions, and guidance on becoming influencers themselves. While lacking traditional coursework or exams, Creator Method provides a behind-the-scenes look at Lipovetsky’s strategies for those seeking to break into the lucrative influencer industry.
The creator economy is a rapidly growing market, projected to reach $480 billion annually by 2027. While major tech platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok dominate the space, a new crop of innovative startups is emerging to disrupt different segments. These startups offer tools and services to help creators build their businesses, from influencer marketing and advertising to AI-powered content creation and management.
Venture capitalists are actively investing in promising creator economy startups like Agentio, an ad platform for creator-led content, Captions for AI video editing, Delphi for creating virtual creator clones, and Merse for interactive digital comics. Other notable startups include Flavrs for food creators, Ingenius for influencer campaign management, Kajabi for online courses and newsletters, and SymphonyOS for music marketing.
Companies like Lost In, Trips, and RedCircle are tackling niche areas like travel media, creator copyright, and podcast adtech respectively. Meanwhile, ShopMy is facilitating social commerce through affiliate and influencer marketing. With their innovative solutions, these startups are carving out spaces in the booming creator economy alongside tech giants.