In 2021, Social Network Video ad spending was approx. $15b, and is expected to continue growing by 62.1% between 2019 and 2023. Social Network Video ad spending is increasing because video consumption is dominating internet traffic, much of which is driven by “influencers”.
Companies are aware of this trend and are incorporating influencer marketing strategies into their broader digital advertising initiatives. In a survey by Influencer Marketing Hub (source, 2021), 59% of companies responded that they allocate a specific piece of their budget to content marketing, and 75% of that group plans to dedicate funds to influencer marketing.
Think of this scenario: You run a brand or a portfolio of brands, and most of your peers are tapping into influencer marketing to grow their business. You decide to present your next viral campaign idea, but management turns it down because they lack clarity on how they can measure the ROI.
Does this sound familiar? You are not alone! According to a McKinsey Study, 45% of CFOs said marketing proposals had been declined or not fully funded because they didn’t demonstrate a clear line to value. The internet is still relatively untamed, and it can be hard to demonstrate the monetary value that a viral campaign could drive for a business.
However, let’s say you do have the buy-in from the entire team and you know precisely the type of influencer(s) you need. Even with these boxes checked, the process can be tedious:
- Spending countless hours, days, and weeks finding the perfect influencer(s)
- Once found – negotiating terms is a constant back and forth
- Once in your portfolio of talent, managing all the influencers can require an entirely new internal organization
- Fact-checking the influencer’s content and ensuring they post on-time and most importantly…
- In the end, while trying to calculate what your return on investment looks like, you need to incorporate data sources that you may or may not trust
Even more wearisome, is that this process can take 6 – 10 weeks before your campaign is live.
It is important to highlight that influencer marketing has worked in thousands of situations and will continue to do so. On the other hand, UGC (User Generated Content) on TikTok for instance, has also recently shown some significant returns for brands. With that in mind, here are some emerging trends worth paying attention to:
- Consumers are wary of influencers and are looking to engage with content creators.
- Influencers lose 20% of their audience after each static sponsored post.
- Although influencers are great for repurposing content in paid social campaigns, the recent updates of IOS14 are reducing the effectiveness of such campaigns.
- Video creators offer more value when it comes to repurposing content; as already mentioned, video is driving internet consumption.
Measuring the financial return on influencer marketing campaigns can create contention within your organization. You may be running paid media on Facebook, Twitter, or even simultaneously while your influencer campaign is live. So how can you accurately say what drove that recent uptick in sales?
While engagement is great, you should be demanding more than comments, likes, content views, and conversions to affiliate links.
Besides, the cost of producing content generally tends to outweigh the paid media campaigns that accompany the overall project. Filming content with brand ambassadors in a central location can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, only to run a $50,000 paid campaign. The math doesn’t add up, does it?
New companies are looking to address these issues in the creator economy that can positively impact the entire ecosystem. Billo.app is a platform that helps brands connect with creators at scale. They can help produce video ads, testimonials, unboxing videos, how-to videos, and 360 videos. By simply creating a task and choosing a video creator to film the product(s), brands can get new custom videos compatible with leading platforms and networks.
The team at Curastory has created a new and exciting creator video ad network for brands to tap into. They see their platform as the next iteration of influencer marketing, but the execution is programmatic advertising on a demand-side platform.
Curastory’s creators are focused on producing content their fans are passionate about and tag their videos with content-related tags. These videos, not yet published to their social media channels, are stored in the Curastory library so brands and media agencies can bid on sponsoring the video through what we call Creator Ad Reads. Creator Ad Reads are advertisements done by the creator in their voice and embedded within their video naturally before posting to their social media channels.
For brands to bid on a video to obtain Creator Ad Reads, they input their campaign criteria, such as audience demographics, campaign spend, and budget. Once a bid is accepted, the creator films a promotional video that is edited directly into their content. Through this process, brands can worry less about their ads getting skipped and subscribers have a far less intrusive viewing experience. The kicker is that Curastory offers a proprietary return on ad spend calculation that integrates clients’ Facebook pixels, Google tag manager, and eCommerce stores so brands and agencies can fully understand the impact of the Curastory Creator Ad Read campaign.
Regardless of how you proceed with your next influencer marketing campaign, prioritize video assets, demand more data transparency on your campaign performance, and partner with platforms that won’t drain your resources!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tiffany Kelly, Founder + CEO of Curastory
Tiffany Kelly is the founder & CEO of Curastory disrupting the content creation tech world. Curastory is set to change the way brands interact with content creators and equal the playing field for these new age digital leaders.
Before making her leap into the world of startups, she joined ESPN Stats & Information Group as a Sports Analytics Associate, where she created ESPN’s College Football Fan Happiness Index. She was the first African-American analyst to join the team. Throughout her tenure with the leading sports multimedia company, she became an advocate for harmonizing creativity, human traits, and data science.