The following is part of our Transform 2022 series, check out our blog for additional learnings from this event.
Just as a new influencer seemingly pops up overnight, the influencer marketing space is also seeing nuance and innovation at an extremely quick rate. Understanding how this unique landscape is evolving beyond typical “product placement” will help give marketers a competitive advantage as we head into 2022 and beyond.
Historically, influencer marketing brings to mind sending your product to someone with a lot of Instagram followers and/or paying them to promote it within a post. While this is still a large part of the influencer space, the industry is leveraging this channel in a multitude of ways. For instance, driving quality traffic to content is of the utmost importance for publishers, so what better way to drive quality content than partnering with influencers to promote content directly or tangentially-related to their posts, lifestyle, and interests?
In some cases, the content that is being driven to can be advertiser sponsored and/or promoted, or at the very least surrounded by display ads targeted at a highly qualified audience.
“This activity is proof that influencers aren’t just people that post photos on the internet, but are individual advertisers who have a big impact on brand awareness and sales. Consumers have grown to trust the creators they follow and authenticity is important when partnering with influencers.”– Kristie Murphy, Social Channel Manager
Influencer marketing won’t make it into every plan in 2022, but innovation in this space has opened the door for more interesting opportunities that align with client business outcomes. We expect that influencers will continue to increase their prominence with many of the traditionally-digital channels that we know and love today, such as social, video, and publisher, and we will continue to leverage these tactics to deliver results.
