Gigapay’s Post

A few weeks back I added comments about the current state of influencer payments in 2024. TL:DR The amount of money that businesses are spending on influencers has been growing at an average 44% YoY since 2016, last year alone $21bn+ was spent using influencers. In the US alone, the outlook for 2025 is that digital marketing will exceed $400bn of which influencer makes up about $8.6bn (14% YoY) representing the highest growth rate across all sectors. Influencer is BIG and is only getting bigger,! As the lines between social ($90bn in the US) and influencer blur with creator-led content becoming a key part of paid performance and organic, this is what gets me most excited about building SoSquared. Together with some amazing other companies, we are brick by brick building the infrastructure to support the entire creator economy. Watch this space 🎯

Pleasure to be featured alongside some great agencies in this influencer payment report.  Creator payments have been one of the hottest topics in the last 2 years. Influencer marketing still operates as an immature industry, with no real standards across the board.  Payment terms with brands can range from upfront to 120 days  Payment terms with creators can range from upfront to 75 days (typically)  A lot of agencies end up operating as a bank, managing inflows and outflows on a weekly basis. However creators hold a lot of social and PR power. Therefore when brands are slow paying, it puts incredible pressure on the agency to handle reputation both ways, cash flow and purely operating as a business.  The market is making positive moves but we have a while to go. 

Gigapay's latest State of Influencer Payments report is live. Grab your copy here if you want to see the latest trends (and hear input from me) My two cents (TLDR): 1. Performance-Based Payments are on the rise, to the tune of 50% of all relationships 2. Compliance is the bottleneck to growth. Particularly Cross-border regulations & tax laws 3. Delayed payments damage trust and harm the brand / influencer relationship #InfluencerMarketing

Why social listening platforms can’t listen – and how SocialVoice is looking to step in The market opportunity for brands who get influencer marketing right is huge. According to Goldman Sachs, the creator economy is worth around $250 billion (£205.4bn) today. By 2027, it could hit $480bn (£394.5bn), in line with predicted growth for global digital advertising spend. In line with this trend is an increasing preference for brands to... Read more » https://soci.es/fIv

Why social listening platforms can’t listen – and how SocialVoice is looking to step in The market opportunity for brands who get influencer marketing right is huge. According to Goldman Sachs, the creator economy is worth around $250 billion (£205.4bn) today. By 2027, it could hit $480bn (£394.5bn), in line with predicted growth for global digital advertising spend. In line with this trend is an increasing preference for brands to... Read more » https://soci.es/fIv

Influencer marketing isn’t a silver bullet for all digital problems, but it can help organizations cut through the noise. James Davis and Ory Rinat discuss where influencer strategies succeed and where they fall short in today’s digital world. Watch, listen, and subscribe: https://bit.ly/3LRzaaD

Here's an interesting question about the influencer bubble. I know a lot of you do influencer-adjacent work and have opinions. I don't. But I do have strategy. Here's how I'd use it to answer this question: A lot of responses to Kimeko's question focus on the SUPPLY SIDE - look at how many influencers there, how many more are coming online and creating content, how many new platforms and opportunities are being created to leverage and encourage and enable them, etc. All that's true, and gets at one part of the equation. If you want influencers - large or small, broad or niche - there's more variety than ever. But when thinking about the market, supply itself is not a solution. You also need buyers. So we'd also need to look at the DEMAND SIDE. The questions I would examine are whether brands (and agencies, who often introduce the idea of using influencers to brands) are as eager to use them as they have been previously. Are they becoming easier or harder to work with? Are they more or less expensive? Are they driving better or worse outcomes? And - importantly if you're an agency - is there more or less internal resistance to working with them? Or more plainly - do your clients like them? Because ultimately your job isn't to be right - it's to inspire the confidence in your clients to drive action. And if your clients are over influencers you'll probably enjoy a longer and healthier relationship with them if you drop them from the plan and find something else. Which brings me to the third question I'd examine: the AVAILABILITY OF ALTERNATIVES. Are there other channels that could do the same work as influencers, that are more attractive in some ways? For example, Germany's Tourism Department just bowed their own AI influencer on their social channels. Some clients have more personal familiarity with podcasts than influencers. Brand stunts are another way of reaching people on social. All of these can impact the way clients look at their options. All of which is to say that I don't know the answer to Kimeko's question, but as a strategist your job is to know how to get to it in a way that's credible, defensible and persuasive. But go read Kimeko's post and comments if you want actual answers to the question instead of a lecture about it.

Such a great question. Put simply, creators and influencers are experiencing burnout, and brands have not seen ROI at scale within the timeframes most c-suites demand. If I spend $25,000 on influencer partnerships expecting an immediate return, I’m lucky if I break even when first launching the program. We all know there is a significant test and learn period when starting a new campaign. Many brands simply don’t have the financial runway to invest heavily without seeing a significant return quickly. That’s just the reality. Brands have become much more savvy about who they work with, asking more questions about ROI on sales and affiliate performance. They are now holding influencers accountable and shifting from flat fees to CPM models. However, many influencers dislike this shift because the majority do not generate enough sales to justify the time and effort required to create their content. As for affiliate marketing, I see it becoming a more significant part of the industry, as it essentially functions as performance-based marketing. While there is still room for flat fees combined with affiliate models, many influencers are willing to work solely on affiliate terms because they understand their audience and are confident in their ability to drive sales. Additionally, influencers are making smarter decisions about the brand deals they accept. A few years ago, when the industry was still emerging, influencers often said yes to everything, and brands would overhire. That’s no longer the case. Both parties are now making more strategic choices, positioning themselves for significant returns on their partnerships. So, I wouldn’t necessarily say that the influencer bubble is going to burst, as some have suggested in the comments on the original post. Rather, there’s a massive shift happening, making the industry more niche and strategic, which is how it should have been all along.

Not bursting, just evolving. Much like cable TV’s evolution into a disparate set of streaming options—the influencer space, as we know it, has changed and will continue to change as we navigate the delicate balance between efficiency (ad spend), reach, and authenticity. Curious if my experience partnering with influencers is an outlier, or is it more in line with this evolution? Friends in social, would love to hear your POV. I’ve found that partnering with micro influencers—not because they require less budget, but because their content tends to better resonate with their audience—yields stronger, lower-funnel results than bigger influencer buys. From the lens of execution, smaller influencers tend to be easier to work with, more excited to get creative (because they’re hungrier?), and they haven’t worn audiences out with their templated content. Brand safety is another consideration here—mega influencers can bring your brand down by association if you’re not careful. Is there more trepidation in the influencer space because of this risk? Don’t get me wrong, there is certainly a time and a place for mega influencers—surprising brand partnerships, philanthropic campaigns, fashion collabs, etc. And more power to you if you’ve got the budget and ideas to play in this space. But my hot take? Micro influencers got now.

Speed is your hidden winner in influencer marketing. It's more than just jumping on the latest TikTok trend. It's about executing campaigns quickly, from finding creators to final approvals. But as easy as it sounds, speed isn’t simple. Many things can hinder your process 💭✨🧠 Lucky for us, Modash have collaborated with some of the top influencer experts across the globe including Andreea, Anna, Lia and Anna-Maria to learn more about how they alleviate these bottlenecks - and how you can too! Check out our guide below, and read more here → https://lnkd.in/eFwMzRPs AD #ModashPartner