Will This New Platform Help Prevent Influencer Marketing Fraud?

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Originally published on ION.

(Editor’s note: AList is published by a.network. To get up to speed on the rapid changes affecting the influencer marketing landscape, click here.)

As the rise of influencer marketing fraud increases, one entrepreneur created a new platform to help provide greater transparency in the influencer process. Here’s why.

Influencer marketing fraud cost brands $1.3 billion in 2019, according to Cheq and economist Roberto Cavazos. The figure accounts for 15 percent of what the report predicts will be an $8.5 billion market in influencer marketing spend. 

Much of that fraud comes from fake social accounts, especially on Instagram, where a new report from Instascreener found fake accounts rose from one percent to 1.2 percent from September to December 2019. 

To help combat the rise of fake accounts and promote more transparency in influencer marketing, entrepreneur Aaron Simpson recently started a new platform. Kindred digitizes word-of-mouth recommendations on social media channels and turns them into direct sales for brands while offering customers deals. Plus, a percentage of each transaction goes toward a charity of the influencer’s choice.

The platform’s ability to attribute sales to specific influencers may be the solution the industry needs to achieve greater transparency. Here’s how it works: brands pay commission on any sales resulting from a Kindred influencer. A percentage of each transaction goes toward a charity of the influencer’s choice, ensuring brands are fulfilling their corporate social responsibility. The app’s emphasis on sales rather than audience size means there’s no smoke and mirrors—brands can track and measure the performance of the influencer’s posts.

“Kindred does something very simple, as it taps into two prevailing trends: a concern over how we consume as a society, and a growing skepticism around paid-to-post “influencer” marketing. For brands, Kindred is a new, authentic and direct link to customers, and for charities, it’s an amazing and original way to get straight to a younger audience–who very much want to contribute and are demanding this shift to conscious consumerism,” said Kindred COO Mike Gadd.

Influencers with any following size can join the app for free via the Apple Store and Google Play Store then share the products and services they love on their social media channels. Since launching six months ago, thousands of brands including Missguided, Gillette and Jimmy Choo have joined the Kindred community.

SaaS Marketing With Dave Gerhardt, CMO Of Privy

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During the 196th episode of “Marketing Today,” I interview Dave Gerhardt, the chief marketing officer of Privy. Gerhardt was formerly the vice president of marketing at Drift, has been featured in numerous national publications and co-authored the book “Conversational Marketing.”

We discuss how Gerhardt’s early interest in working for a startup led him to join Privy at a previous point in his career. Then we learn how Gerhardt later leveraged his podcast to land a job at Drift. He also shares insight into building out a highly efficient marketing team.

Gerhardt has excellent advice for creating your personal brand and starting a podcast. “If you start with a show first, you can get all the other content with it.” In his view, audio drives everything. He adds, “Even if nobody listens to our show, we’re going to get enough content to feed our funnel for a year if we do it right. That alone is worth the investment.”

Gerhardt also shares why he went all-in on growing his following on LinkedIn and how he moved many of his marketing conversations over to paid subscribers on Patreon. He says, “If you can continue to understand people, and just evolve with whatever comes with that, I think that’s how you become successful in the long term.” Gerhardt’s passion for marketing comes through as he emphasizes the importance of continuous learning and a focus on creativity as the marketing world shifts.

Highlights from this week’s “Marketing Today”:

  • Dave shares his background and how he became involved in marketing. 01:30
  • Dave describes how his interest in working at a startup led him to join Privy for the first time and where he went after that. 03:26
  • Learn how Dave landed a job through a connection he made on his podcast. 05:19
  • Learn more about Privy. 08:58
  • Dave shares his vision for his marketing build-out at Privy. 11:33
  • Dave’s theory about how demand gen can work on his team. 15:38
  • How to measure brand awareness without a big survey. 17:25
  • Why podcasts are the form of marketing you can gain the most leverage from when done right. 19:07
  • Learn how Dave is currently using Patreon as a platform. 21:26
  • Why he feels that even ten subscribers would make the Patreon experiment worthwhile. 25:06
  • What’s next for Dave at Privy in 2020? 26:10
  • Is there an experience in his past that defines who he is today? 28:10
  • What advice would he give his younger self if he had to start all over? 29:39
  • Are there any brands, companies or causes that JT follows that he thinks other people should take notice of? 30:52
  • Is there a threat or an opportunity he thinks marketers should be aware of as they enter 2020, or is there something he thinks marketers need to be doing? 32:14

Resources Mentioned:

Subscribe to the podcast:
Listen in iTunes (link: http://apple.co/2dbdAhV)
Listen in Google Podcasts (link: http://bit.ly/2Rc2kVa)
Listen in Spotify (Link: http://spoti.fi/2mCUGnC )

Connect with the guest:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegerhardt/
https://twitter.com/davegerhardt

Connect with Marketing Today and Alan Hart:
http://twitter.com/abhart
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanhart
http://twitter.com/themktgtoday
https://www.facebook.com/themktgtoday/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketing-today-with-alan-hart/

Alan B. Hart is the creator and host of “Marketing Today with Alan Hart,” a weekly podcast where he interviews leading global marketing professionals and business leaders. Alan advises leading executives and marketing teams on opportunities around brand, customer experience, innovation, and growth. He has consulted with Fortune 100 companies, but he is an entrepreneur at his core, having founded or served as an executive for nine startups.

Supreme’s Red Oreos Are Going For $10,000 On eBay

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Supreme created a red branded Oreo cookie of the double-stuffed variety in partnership with Mondelez International as part of its spring-summer 2020 collection, which launched today. A three-pack of cookies goes for $8 at New York City Supreme stores and will be available to buy online next week.

An image of the red cookie was leaked three days prior on a Supreme super-fan and reseller’s Twitter account, @TheSupremeSaint. The post received 67,000 likes and nearly 19,000 retweets. 

Yet before Supreme dropped the Oreo in the brand’s signature red, the cookie made its way to eBay. One package of the three “rare” cookies has a current bid of $10,000 with 51 bidders and 176 watchers.

Hype around the Supreme Oreo cookie started months ago on Reddit, a potential leak from a Nabisco plant worker. Users responded to the image in confusion, with one Redditor in disbelief saying, “This is wild if it’s real. Hype cookies, I never thought I’d see the day.”

Supreme celebrated 25 years last year and has a slew of brand collaborations under its belt. In 2017, it started a luxury-meets-streetwear revolution when it partnered with Louis Vuitton to launch luggage and apparel that replaced the designer’s signature brown for Supreme’s red.

In October 2019, Supreme released a North Face Statue of Liberty Baltoro jacket for its fall-winter 2019 collection, coinciding with the opening of its San Francisco store.

Shortly after, Supreme and Rimowa announced their second partnership in November 2019—aluminum suitcases wrapped in a broken glass motif and Supreme logo.

What started as a small skateboard shop with roots in Manhattan’s Lafayette Street in 1994 now boasts a $1 billion valuation after the Carlyle Group invested $500 million in Supreme last year. The brand operates 12 stores, six of which are located in Japan.

Marketers Continue To Shift Away From Traditional To Omnichannel

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A majority of marketers (88 percent) have shifted away from traditional campaign activities to omnichannel strategies, according to the third installment of Merkle’s Customer Engagement Report. The report explores marketers’ data usage, barriers to personalization and marketers’ measurement capabilities.

Merkle’s research shows that personalization is growing, but there’s a need for growth toward real-time personalization. On where they have high visibility into their customer journeys, 84 percent of respondents cited digital channels such as website, social media and email; followed by 59 percent and 44 percent who have high visibility into customer journeys in offline channels and mass media, respectively. A quarter of respondents said their focus is on real-time personalization tactics whereas the remaining three quarters prioritize pre-defined personalization or somewhere in the middle.

The report also found that brands have a strong reliance on customer input as well as management technologies in their martech efforts. Eighty-two percent of respondents answered seven or higher when asked what degree of customer input they apply to product strategy and improvements. More respondents (58 percent) are investing in databases and management tech over campaign and decision management tools. 

When looking at overall implementation of personalization to date, 54 percent of US marketers have implemented personalization in five or more channels compared to 57 percent for UK marketers.

For greater personalization, Merkle suggests applying martech investments to operational activities such as identity, data and insights given that 29 percent of marketers have dedicated 21-25 percent of their budgets to identity solutions.

There’s room for growth when it comes to how brands are measuring the effectiveness of their marketing efforts as only 54 percent of respondents said they have clear definitions for each key performance indicator (KPI) across their business. Similarly, 23 percent of marketers have only a data management (DMP) platform or neither a DMP nor a customer data platform (CDP). 

One of the case studies highlighted in the report includes British daily newspaper The Times’ success in growing click-through rates by 200 percent via artificial intelligence-driven models applied to newsletters. 

Findings in this report are based on a survey conducted by a Merkle Company, Ugam, in November 2019 with 400 marketers at major US and UK brands across different verticals.

Instagram, Growth Hacking And Personalization: Three Trends That Shaped The Decade

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The past ten years have been a wild marketing ride. Although it’s hard to be hyper-critical reflection while the paint still drying, it seems we’ve weathered one of the most turbulent and pivotal decades in the last fifty years, rivaling the 1980s, in terms of innovation, social upheavals and rapid change.

As marketers, the period from 2010 to 2020 has completely transformed the way we conduct business. The promises of the digital world finally caught up to and in some ways superseded its physical limitations. Smartphones took over the world, social media reached a global audience and the rise of streaming and personalized content services fundamentally changed our relationship with government, the media and our neighbors. 

But like the black goo in the movie Prometheus, these innovations have warped and mutated almost everything they’ve touched. It’s also been a decade of rampant disruption, and the flipside to all this has been the rise of a whole new set of problems caused by new technologies, including culture wars to fake news and declining consumer trust.

To close the book on the last ten years, I’ve picked three of the broadest trends that shaped marketing over the decade—from the maturation of the sharing economy to the disintegration of the CMO role.

The Instagram Decade

The rise and (higher) rise of social media is easily the most significant trend of the 2010s. As hard as it might be to believe in 2020, when almost every marketing plan begins and ends with a social component, at the beginning of the decade most marketers didn’t know what to do when it came to social media.

It’s an understatement to say it was a decade of revolutionary change for social media. But, while Facebook and Twitter’s position at the top of the pile remains curiously unchallenged, there has also been a proliferation of new platforms including Snapchat, Vine, Pinterest and TikTok. However, if you could point to the one brand that defined the past decade, it would be Instagram. Launched in 2010 and acquired by Facebook in 2012, the photo-sharing app has grown like wildfire, ending the era with over a billion regular users and an estimated market value of $100 billion.

Instagram’s effect on marketing has been profound. Getting over an early reputation as a repository of food pics and selfies, the app has since gone on to redefine the relationship between brands and consumers. A state of affairs that anyone who has people queuing for a selfie at the Eiffel Tower or witnessed the punters lined up for brand activation at Coachella can readily testify to.

By encouraging its users to post authentic snapshots of their lives, Instagram has also been the main driving force behind the can of worms that is influencer marketing. Since emerging in 2013, spending on influencer marketing had hit almost $8 million by the end of the decade, but it remains a channel that is fraught with uncertainty. By the end of 2019, over-exposure to influencer techniques and an explosion of superficial, inauthentic content, faked results and declining conversion rates seemed to be blowing the bottom out of the influencer bubble.

Big Data, Growth Hacking And The Death Of The CMO

In the past ten years, marketing has gotten a lot more complicated. In the heady days of 2010, when programmatic and real-time bidding was still a very new technology, most media buying moved at a relatively stately pace. CMO’s had to concentrate on choosing a message, figuring out a media strategy and seeing what stuck.

By 2015, the world had changed. The introduction of ever more sophisticated artificial intelligence and martech produced ads that now moved in real-time, while machine learning meant that campaigns could be tweaked on the go. What’s more, the increasing adoption of media led to customers demanding two-way conversations with their favourite brands. The end result? Marketing departments suddenly had to think and move faster than they ever had before.

Around the same time, the marketing manager was also expected to do more. The rise in growth hacking from 2010, with its emphasis on long term growth over short term customer acquisition, extended marketing into almost every part of the business. Not only was the CMO now a vital cog in the product development cycle by the middle of the decade, but data and optimization had come to rule almost every department. The key to business is customer retention through seamless omnichannel experiences. To succeed, c-level marketers had to become a jack of all trades, juggling technology, analytics, creativity and brand.

If this sounds overwhelming to you, then it won’t surprise you to find out that chief marketing officers often have the shortest lifespan of the average c-suite. At the dawn of the 2020’s many companies including Uber, McDonald’s and Johnson & Johnson are doing away with the role, and instead, spreading marketing responsibilities around the boardroom. 

Engagement, Personalization And The Ascent Of Content Marketing

If you wanted to get a laugh from a room of marketers in January 2010, then the best way would have probably have been to tell them that the next decade was going to be a renaissance for content marketers.

Much of the industry viewed it as an appendage of search marketing and most of the output was unashamedly keyword-based. In fact, the only thing most marketers worried about was how to pump it out quicker and reduce costs further, as illustrated by a report from the Content Marketing Institute in 2010 reporting that the top challenge cited by marketers was quantity based over quality based.

That was until social media changed the landscape. By the mid-2010s, the rise of blogging, peer-to-peer platforms and data-led targeting produced a more informed buying audience who were less willing to believe overly branded messaging. The growth of on-demand services, in turn, led to a more independently minded consumer and the job of content marketing changed from push to pull.

By 2017, engagement had taken over clicks and interaction as the main focus of most brand’s content marketing strategies. Creatively, the emphasis shifted from answering questions and extolling virtues to inspiring customers, harnessing audiences and building brand love. Freed from the shackles of always having to employ the hard sell, content marketing started to rival traditional publishers in terms of creativity and quality. Data-led personalization turned customers into creatives, and ever more creative use of user-generated content has strengthened the bond between brand and customer.

Heading into the twenties, content marketing largely sits at the center of most brand communication. With Generation Z now coming of age, the importance of personalized content that’s relevant and shareable won’t be diminishing any time soon.

The Social Index Helps Brands Evaluate Earned Media

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(Editor’s note: AList is published by a.network.)

There’s no media like earned media, and with over 3,000 users, Ayzenberg Group’s Social Index is the industry standard for measuring it. Also known as free media, publicity or (in Europe) advertising value equivalency, earned media is the exposure you receive from reactions by third parties (including journalists, bloggers and consumers) to the actions you take to create buzz for your brand.

Unlike paid or owned media, earned media is organic. In today’s environment, it’s primarily the recognition you receive, including likes, shares and comments, from the content you post on your social media channels. 

Consumers listen to family and friends in a way they rarely do to marketers. Because “word of mouth” has always been considered the most trusted (and therefore best) form of advertising, earned media’s appeal goes beyond its unpaid aspect. When people share their passion for your brand with everyone they’re connected to online, they’re acting as brand ambassadors who promote you in a way money simply can’t buy. 

Given the importance of earned media, it’s essential for you to understand its worth and how it factors into your overall marketing budget. That’s why Ayzenberg Group developed the Social Index, which has become the benchmark for measuring social performance.

The Social Index will help you track the ROI of your social media, influencer and content marketing campaigns across all major social media channels, even in an environment in which metrics for engagements such as Value per Click (VPC), Value per View (VPV) and Value per Share (VPS) are constantly changing. 

Ayzenberg Group’s Social Index team strives to assemble the most data points possible for precise engagement metrics. Compiled from decades of media research, expertise and AI-driven technology, the Social Index provides the most accurate and up-to-date measurements for specific industries. And with the Social Index’s API, these metrics become even better suited to your needs.

Quick to set up, the Social Index API is a simple tool you can use to bring real ROI values to your platform, internal reporting system or analytics dashboard. Updated daily, the index works with your tools and processes to give you the most precise values available for your social media investments.

How Does The Social Index Work?

Ayzenberg Group uses an integrated approach combining scientific methodology, statistical precision and a technical algorithm to produce the most precise values available for social media. It takes social network data related to the costs of reaching certain audiences as a starting point and then applies layers of knowledge, experience, math and machine learning that are the core of its proprietary formula. 

With a focus on actual engagement and not just passive impressions, the Social Index provides up-to-date earned media values for metrics across major social networks, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, YouTube and LinkedIn. These values have become key reporting metrics for hundreds of companies, helping them understand the overall effectiveness of a campaign quickly and efficiently. 

The Social Index includes premium values for specific industries, providing the most precise numbers possible. It is a continual work in progress, updated daily and pulling from a variety of data points for industries that include automotive, entertainment, beauty and fashion, consumer electronics, food and beverage, healthcare, travel and leisure, gaming and financial services. 

Vincent Juarez, principal, media director at Ayzenberg and one of the creators of the Social Index, stresses these industry breakdowns are a critical and differentiating element of the index. “As a company with a long history in paid media, we know that our baseline values were just the first step. Our plan has always been that once we had more information from the industry in addition to a programmatic way to monitor changes in pricing on the platforms, we would revise our method and produce a nearly real-time Index,” he notes.  

According to Ayzenberg Group’s VP of product & technology, Chris Strawser, “As a marketing agency, we have nearly 30 years of experience analyzing the experiences and connection audiences have with brands. The methodology behind the Social Index grew out of that consumer journey, the power we predicted social media would have on that path and the need for brands to define the equity they were building through social speech. 

“The Social Index was built to provide precise brand social media valuation, and we use the wealth of our own campaign data for some of the most prestigious brands in the world in tandem with trusted third-party sources as inputs to our calculations. This process, combined with our expertise in consumer and audience analytics, forms the basis of a methodology that we feel confident in defending.”

The Social Index can be accessed at AList (socialindex.alistdaily.com), which is introducing products and services designed to empower marketers with the tools they need to succeed in today’s social environment.

The Challenging Thing About Mentorship Is All Of It

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Originally published at AW360 by Estie Wassner.

Article takeaways:

  • Mentorship isn’t a walk in the park
  • Some steps to finding a mentor
  • No one reached their fullest potential in a vacuum

The word “mentorship” induces yawns, cringes and raised eyebrows, indicating that it may not be the thing we’d all rather dive into. It is the esoteric cherry-on-the-cake achievement for extroverted juniors and networking gold medallists, mentoring is something many would do, if they truly understood the long-term benefits.

My college peers and professors sprinkled in lukewarm encouragement to, ‘find a mentor’ when I graduated, but I didn’t quite know where to start. Was I supposed to march up to the author I stalk on Instagram after a high-powered luncheon and let her know that I bought her exact pair of Sam Edelman flats because it made her look like a powerful ballet dancer? Ask her to coffee? Mojitos? Do I write a 12-page manifesto on why she should mentor me?

Back then, mentorship was a word that symbolized the meaningful, professional relationships that help form and inform a career. It was about taking real, measured efforts to stay connected with those who had been floating in the treacherous waters of advertising long before us, and those entering after us. It was about forming friendships with people who had a unique perspective unlike our own; shaped by their personal decisions, failures, and successes.

As fate would have it, the minute my LinkedIn announced that I had graduated and snagged a coveted position at a data-driven New York City advertising agency, a coffee date invite from a college student hit my inbox. My heart did a happy dance. Real people wanted my advice! And I could give it!

Here’s the thing; mentorship is scary, in the same way, any other relationship is scary – we don’t want to come off needy, naive or socially inappropriate. And, mentor relationships take work, time and commitment – valuable resources we have already depleted. Like all relationships, mentorship is a hefty investment for all involved. A give and take.

So why do it?

Recently I participated in a panel discussion and coined the phrase, “radical mentorship” – a concept by which you eradicate all fear and doubt surrounding mentorship and dive straight into finding the mentor/mentee networks that will enrich your entire career journey.

First things first, radical mentorship is for everyone. Introvert, extrovert, ISFJ, ENTP, intern, CEO – everyone should be participating, and in their own way. Not everyone is a fan of attending speed-networking sessions, mumbling pleasantries in between crackers and lining their pockets with crafty business cards. You may meet your mentor/ee at the mandatory company fire drill or the boring reception buffet at your cousin’s wedding. Since they are anyone, you can meet them anywhere.

Make the first move. That means, think about how to bring value to the relationship. Really enamored with an executive’s opinionated LinkedIn post? Share that ASAP. Attended a dynamic panel with talented people you admire? Approach them afterward to say thank you. Don’t know what to say? Be genuine about it and keep it short. Radical authenticity is a good step towards radical mentorship.

Be yourself. Chemistry matters. You want to be learning from and/or teaching people who have similar interests. If your pithy, perfect emails are hitting a wall – don’t take it personally. Maybe that person is overwhelmed with their inbox and truly unavailable to invest in a new connection right now. That is OK. That email headline was still a Cannes-worthy gem.

Stay humble and pay it forward. Recognize that no matter how far up the ladder you climb, there will always be a younger, faster, version of you waiting to usurp your position. I say that with less doomsday prediction, and more precautionary realism. Be kind and generous. We can all learn something from everyone. You’d be surprised at how other people’s thoughts can change your perspective.

Do the things. Get on LinkedIn. Join that networking non-profit. Set up that early AM coffee. Hold out your hand. Tweet a compliment. Make it to that fundraiser. Write a congratulatory email. Action has the power to change the course of a relationship. Rather than mope about your lack of network, do something to change it.

And most importantly, realize this; no one reached their fullest potential in a vacuum. We are all a part of something greater than ourselves, connected by our passions, fears, aspirations and Mad Men dreams. In a fast-paced, whirlwind industry that is sometimes cruel in its nature, building a strong network of mentors and mentees confident enough to support and inspire each other is critical. Just go for it. How radical would that be?

Why Brands Can No Longer Let Influencers Grade Their Own Homework

BY

Originally published on ION.

(Editor’s note: AList is published by a.network. To get up to speed on the rapid changes affecting the influencer marketing landscape, click here.)

The number of sponsored Instagram posts that included the hashtag #ad rose 48 percent to more than 3 million in 2019. A stat that indicates influencer culture is here to stay. However, the industry has an influencer fraud problem that it needs to address if it’s going to keep reaping ROI from social platforms. A recent study from Cheq found that influencer fraud will cost marketers $1.3 billion in online ad spending in 2019. 

Below we’re breaking down key statistics surrounding influencer fraud according to social media platform, the indirect implications of the matter and why data transparency is critical to curbing the effects.

Consumers have generally placed a great amount of trust in influencers, and as a result, marketers have put their trust in influencers. That trust comes because, for now, influencer marketing is showing results. Data shows that nearly half of people make a purchase online after seeing an influencer promote it on Instagram, YouTube or Twitter, and about three-quarters of people trust social media to help them make a decision on buying a product or service. 

As sponsored posts and ad spend on Instagram stories surge, so too does a brand’s confidence in an influencer’s ability to reach a certain audience or boost follower count. Still, 63 percent of marketers and brands admitted to having personal experience with influencer fraud in past campaigns. 

Experts note that the root of the influencer fraud problem is a lack of data transparency. In his research, Roberto Cavazos, PhD., professor and economist at the University of Baltimore, who with Cheq conducted the study, “The Economic Cost of Bad Actors on the Internet: Fake Influencer Marketing in 2019,” notes that the need to demonstrate influencers’ reach to a large audience is so compelling that some business have been created for the sole purpose of selling followers. Cavazos cites a study from Paquet-Coulson that showed these “click farm” clients pay about $49 for every 1,000 YouTube subscribers, $34 for the same number on Facebook, $16 for Instagram and $15 for Twitter. Cavazos believes that influencer fraud isn’t necessarily a platform issue. “It’s a contracting and transparency issue—basically in many instances, marketers do not know what they are buying and there are few incentives for sellers to be fully transparent. It’s not the platform, it’s the mode of transactions (buying services of influencers that is the problem),” he tells us.

Much of the suspicious activity in influencer marketing is performed via automation in the form of bots, pods, falsified sponsored posts and fake accounts. Bots mimic community management tasks such as commenting and following/unfollowing people, potentially making up to half of the engagement levels on sponsored content fake. Pods allow influencers to exchange engagement on each other’s posts. There are also instances of influencers promoting fake sponsored posts on behalf of brands that they’re actually not working with. 

Fake accounts have also taken the influencer world by storm. In the first quarter of 2018 alone, there were over 583 million fake Facebook accounts, according to the platform’s first “Community Standards Enforcement Report.” Similarly, in December 2017, Twitter identified and suspended 6.4 million suspicious accounts every week. Many Instagram accounts have audiences comprising 20 percent bots. 

There are ways that marketers can mitigate fraud and gain more transparency when working with influencers. 

“Marketers are worried about fraud on any platform, but there is more fraud awareness on Instagram because it has the most upside for influencers to inorganically grow their numbers. With more budget projected in 2020 towards influencer marketing, marketers should use a trusted, third-party source for a more detailed view into an influencer’s performance, that’s in addition to relying on influencer self-reporting on marketing platforms,” says Erick Schwab, co-founder and co-CEO of Sylo. The third-party verification platform was created to ensure that influencers aren’t “grading their own homework.”

Half of marketers cited that the ability to spot fake followers was a primary challenge of influencer marketing, and brands still get duped. One study found that influencers enlisted by Ritz Carlton comprised 78 percent fake followers and 39 percent for L’Occitane. Micro-influencers, who have between 50,000 and 100,000, often have nearly 20 percent fake followers, according to a Points North Group study.

In May, the Influencer Marketing Council (IMC) released “Fraud Best Practices and Guidelines,” marking the first major initiative to define influencer marketing industry standards on a platform-by-platform basis. Best practices include checking bot-induced spikes in follower count, follower to engagement ratio and confirming that the origin of an influencer’s engagement matches their audience’s location. 

On the importance of third-party verification, Schwab notes, “it delivers a trusted partner to verify audience authenticity, health and performance through ongoing independent observation and assessment of an influencer’s platform interactions, demographics and growth to predict campaign performance. During campaigns, it provides sophisticated detection for invalid, purchased performance for more accurate measurement.”

Despite the prevalence of influencer fraud, 67 percent of brands plan to increase their influencer marketing budgets in the next 12 months. And that’s because marketers see few immediate options with the same ROI.

“While there is significant influencer fraud, influencer marketing is powerful and useful. In addition, there are limited alternatives right now and the foreseeable future. For example, brand created content is an approach that is plausible, but it’s costly to create and not fully tested for effectiveness—is it just TV in a different platform,”  Cavazos notes. 

That gap has left marketers aware of the problem but more likely to work to improve the business and measurement of influencer marketing rather than abandon it. 

If the issue is left unchecked, influencer fraud is predicted to cost the global economy $1.5 billion by 2020. This doesn’t account for the indirect costs associated with the problem, such as decreased brand trust. For relationships between influencer and customer to be symbiotic, brands must look for the aforementioned signs and demand data transparency from potential collaborators.

Why Twitch Is No Longer A Niche Platform

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Originally published on ION.

(Editor’s note: AList is published by a.network. To get up to speed on the rapid changes affecting the influencer marketing landscape, click here.)

The gaming industry is set to make $152 billion in universal earnings this year, providing marketers newfound opportunities to reach one of the most untapped audiences—streamers. Twitch streamers are becoming notable influencers in their own right and the popularity of Twitch has attracted influencer activations sponsored by gaming and non-gaming brands including Wendy’s, Gillette and KFC. The live streaming video platform, which Amazon acquired in 2018 for nearly a billion dollars, has more than 15 million daily active users who watch an average of 95 minutes daily. 

The platform’s real-time content offers a community experience that helps deepen the connection between streamer and user, making it a strategic platform for product placement and campaigns. While it’s uncharted marketing territory, Twitch currently has 220,000 affiliates and 27,000 partners. Ahead we take a closer look at the current Twitch influencer landscape, how early adopters of Twitch influencer marketing are targeting audiences spanning a variety of categories on the platform and why it should no longer be considered a niche platform.

Twitch considers itself the world’s leading social video service and community for gamers. Historically, the platform has given gamers and gaming fans an avenue to share their enthusiasm. Eighty-one percent of Twitch users are male and 55 percent are between the ages of 18-34. Twitch runs ads just like other social media platforms, but its main differentiator is that influencer promotions appear in a live video format rather than a static image or video. Much like Instagram or YouTube, Twitch influencer marketing activations include shoutouts, giveaways and videos of streamers unboxing products. 

What gives brands who utilize Twitch influencer marketing an added advantage is the fact that users are actively watching a streamer’s video with little to no interruption. Brands looking to try influencer marketing on Twitch should consider a streamer’s concurrent viewership (CCV) rather than follower count to determine the extent of their pull. Think of CCV as Twitch’s version of reach and impressions as the CCV shows exactly how many people a streamer is actively reaching on a daily basis.

The lengthy, unfiltered live streams that dominate Twitch generate engaging content and in turn, deeper connections. This gives brands an incentive to invest in Twitch influencer marketing, and the number of influencer partnerships appears to be rising. The number of revenue-earning American Twitch streamers grew 59 percent from 2016 to 2017.

“I think there’s a LOT of opportunity to drive ROI here, but I also believe it requires a thoughtful, nuanced and sensitive approach to these relationships that not every brand is able to manage. Blundering in and expecting to flash some cash to get a streamer to do exactly what you want (just as with other kinds of influencers), really won’t work well with the kinds of influencers a brand really wants to work with,” David Bloom, a writer and consultant on influencer marketing and related issues for Forbes and Tubefilter, tells AList.

The bulk of Twitch influencer marketing happens between brand and gamer. One notable influencer activation includes Guy Beahm’s partnership with Daybreak Games to market the brand’s H1Z1 Auto Royale game. During his three-hour live stream, Beahm was able to connect with his fans while answering their questions and providing a comprehensive demonstration of the game. To date, the video has garnered 39,346 views.

Gaming may have catapulted Twitch to where it stands on the influencer marketing totem pole today, but that’s slowly evolving. What started out as a platform that let people flaunt their gaming skills has turned into a place for non-gamers to also share their talents and interests with the world. Last year, Twitch introduced 10 new stream categories including art, hobbies and crafts, food and drink, music and performing arts, beauty and body art, science and technology, just chatting, travel and outdoor, sports and fitness special events, talk shows and podcasts, ASMR and tabletop role-playing (RPG) games. 

Recently, a bevy of brands tested out Twitch influencer marketing. In March, Gillette announced the “Gillette Gaming Alliance,” a team of 11 Twitch streamers from 11 countries to represent the brand and support its Twitch campaign, “Bits for Blades.” The Gillette Gaming Alliance streamers gave fans the opportunity to earn Twitch Bits—virtual goods users can send in chat to support streamers financially—by buying select Gillette products displayed and talked about by Alliance team members. By clicking on a Gillette-branded banner, viewers could then purchase Gillette products through Amazon or a third-party vendor and earn at least 250 Twitch Bits in return. Streamers in the alliance included CourageJD from the US, Dendi from Russia and Yapyap30 from Korea, to name a few.

Last year, KFC also turned to a Twitch influencer to promote its chicken wings. The quick-service restaurant teamed up streamer Ben Lupo, who goes by DrLupo—a professional Destiny player and sponsored Fortnite streamer with 518,000 followers—for a two-day giveaway. Lupo and another Twitch influencer, Anthony Kongphan, played a game during which they ran an interactive livestream contest. Users were encouraged to comment “winner winner” every time the duo won a round of the game, which would produce a unique KFC emoji. They gave away free $5 gift cards along the way, marking a clever move on KFC’s part to organically tie its brand to the gaming community.

Recent data shows that Twitch outperforms live game streaming competitors including YouTube Gaming Live and Facebook Gaming in terms of viewership. According toStreamElements, Twitch viewers watched 2.7 billion hours, YouTube streaming viewers tuned in for 736 million and Facebook Gaming saw 198 million hours viewed.

Hours viewed aside, YouTube may be more profitable. “Though Twitch commands some big live audiences, relatively speaking, I’m told that Twitch influencers are monetizing better on YouTube. They typically take highlights (or someone else pulls them for them) and turn those into shorter, on-demand videos of “greatest hits” that may involve more than one streamer. Twitch dominates the live-streaming space for games, though Facebook Watch, IGTV, YouTube Live and Twitter’s Periscope all do quite well in live streaming other kinds of content,” Bloom notes. 

A streamer named Nightblue3 has built a loyal fan base around playing League of Legends on both YouTube and Twitch. He averages more than four YouTube videos weekly and about 23 hours of streaming on Twitch. Though his Twitch live streams garner an average of 12,500 viewers, Nightblue3’s earned media value (EMV) on a YouTube video is more than 30 times higher.

For brands considering Twitch as an influencer marketing strategy, Bloom says there are first some important questions to ask: “Are the audiences connecting to a specific streamer a good overlap with your brand? What innovative or unique ways can you connect and leverage a relationship with that influencer that also brings value to your brand? You’re effectively renting their audience, which they’ve laboriously built for months or years. You should expect they’ll be intensely attentive to that audience, and messaging that is appropriate for their sense of their audience, and of who they are.”

For Smart Audio, Engagement Is Key

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Originally published at AW360 by Tom Webster.

In our most recent edition of The Smart Audio Report, our research partnership with NPR, we learned that privacy concerns remain an issue with people who have not purchased a smart speaker. In fact, 57 percent agree with the statement, “You worry that hackers could use your smart speaker to get access to your home or personal information,” which is undoubtedly a significant barrier to purchase for many. This stat is perhaps not very surprising. But here’s one that did surprise me: the percentage of people who DO own these devices agreeing with the statement above is… 58 percent. Nearly identical.

In fact, owners and non-owners alike share similar fears and concerns about their privacy and the security of their data. With the latter, these concerns affect their decision to pass, at least for now, on inviting these always-listening devices into their homes. With owners, it’s a little more complicated. In our qualitative research, we detected a fair amount of resignation. After all, the smartphones in our pocket are doing far more egregious things to our privacy every day. Also, a slight majority of owners (54 percent) say that they trust the manufacturer of their device to keep their information secure, so there is currently a little goodwill there.

The privacy concerns of owners might also manifest themselves in other ways, however. While data security may be a barrier to purchase for some, it might also represent a barrier to experimentation for existing owners–in other words, they may be comfortable asking for a song or to have a timer set, but might draw the line at health or financial-related applications. The primary use case for these devices for most owners is to consume music or spoken word audio, information services, and other more mundane tasks such as setting timers. And that might be just fine with the current universe of users.

In fact, in one of the most intriguing findings from the NPR/Edison Research Smart Audio Report is the juxtaposition of these two data points: first, the longer you have owned your device, the fewer things you do with it. For people who have owned one for less than three months, they use an average of nearly 12 different skills weekly, while those who have had their devices for over two years use seven.

You might interpret this to mean that the devices become less important over time, but that’s where the second data point comes in: the percentage of owners who agree with the statement “You wouldn’t want to go back to life without your smart speaker” increases over time. In fact, nearly three times as many in the greater than two years camp agree with that as persons who just received theirs in the last three months. In other words, people love them even more, despite the fact that they pare down on skills and features they might have experimented with when they first got their devices.

For brands seeking activations on smart speakers, then, it is not discovery, but engagement–that is the real challenge. Trial of branded skills and content can be encouraged through native advertising in on-speaker content streams, but the real trick is in making skills or services that are truly useful, and not just novel. It’s very easy to get caught up in the promise of what these devices could do and lose track of what we need them to do–entertain us or be genuinely helpful in our day to day lives. With genuine utility will come greater trust, and with greater trust, a greater willingness to try voice assistant technology in more areas of our lives.