In the early days of influencer marketing campaigns were largely seen as an extension of PR, where brands could also conduct affiliate marketing. This effectively treated influencers like bloggers, who could earn money based on referred traffic.
Speaking at the Nevaly’s influencer marketing summit in London today, the company’s CEO David Kim said while these are still fundamental and bedrock practices in influencer marketing, the sector has evolved.
In modern influencer marketing, there is a full range of marketing campaigns and activations, said Kim, including:
- Targeted brand awareness
- Long-term sponsorships
- Social/Viral campaigns
- In-depth brand engagement via premium sponsored content
- Paid media, retargeting, lead generation efforts
- Event “coverage” that brings online eyeballs to offline experiential events
- Influencers as celebrity endorsers
YouTube versus TV
These days influencer marketing is increasingly being used by brands across sectors to reach audiences, including games.
The space has become so significant that Kim said going forward, companies recruiting an internal dedicated influencer marketing manager will increasingly become the norm.
Kim presented research from Nielsen on millennial content consumption behaviour in the US, which claimed that the daily consumption of TV is two times more prominent than YouTube and Twitch.
It also claimed that over one week, on average people spent 18 hours watching content on their TV screens, compared to 11 hours on PCs, laptops and mobile devices.
However, a report from Variety revealed a very different set of statistics. It claimed TV consumption stood at 8.2 hours on average, while Netflix accounted for 8.8 hours and YouTube and other social media platforms made up 12.1 hours.
In a survey of millennials asking what video sources they can’t live without, YouTube came out top with 67 per cent. TV meanwhile came in at 36 per cent behind Netflix and social media like Facebook and Instagram.
What is the value of influencer content?
Given a platform like YouTube is still significant, whichever report you believe, Kim said where influencer marketing really shines is its impact on the audience.
He said that while views are important, it’s the impact of the video that’s crucial. The things that YouTube campaigns can do best is creating authentic content coming from popular influencers, along with the potential for high engagement.
Factors like this, Kim said, can be used to help convince viewers that a product is worthy of at least being tried out - which Kim says is where influencer marketing comes in.
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