News UK, parent company of The Times, Sunday Times, and The Sun newspapers, has unveiled an influencer marketing agency.

The new company is named The Fifth and its comprised of eight staff members from across the commercial division of New UK’s London offices. News UK’s director of digital strategy and partnerships Oliver Lewis will assume the role of managing director.

The main goal of the new agency will be to match brands with influencers that are best suited for their needs, not solely based on audience outreach but on tone and individual style of the influencer.

News UK will leverage its media portfolio for distribution for campaigns, which can get very expensive right from the start. A single influencer can require around $60,000 - over $300,000 depending on how complex an influencer campaign would need to be in order to reach its goals. The Fifth also aims to promote full transparency regarding their projects.

Calculating reach

This goes beyond numbers and puts more emphasis on the types of communities an influencer would grow and how well it matches up to specific brands. News UK is partnering up with CORQ to use technology that will bring the right talent to the right companies.

“Total follower count isn’t necessarily reflective of the number of eyeballs,” sais Lewis.

“As we have direct API access, we can report on the exact number of unique accounts that view each piece of media. We then average this number over the last 100 posts to determine an actual reach.”

“The market is shifting toward wanting more trusted professional partners to tell longer stories with the talent," Lewis added.

"There is mass disruption across the whole ecosystem. These incredible social influencers have grown up on the platforms and cultivated huge followings becoming the social commentators of the new age. We want to help elevate them from the platforms into mainstream news brands.”