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← Back to Ideas#AWEurope 2019: Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing has grown tremendously over the last few years and like any growing industry there has been many up’s and downs.
Due to the rapid growth there have been many difficulties trying to regulate how agencies work with influencers, how to regulate content that goes live on social channels, and how to measure results.
The first talk I attended covered 'Influence Across Platforms' which talked about vetting influencers with different softwares and how to ensure that an influencer has grown organically without buying followers or likes. Emily Young, Head of Takumi UK, talked about how the vetting process can be difficult at times and how software provides the industry with a certain level of proof and assurity of an influencer's growth. But, there will always need to be a human element to the vetting process. Emily explained that there are times that the software may give a green light to an influencer, but someone with years in the industry would be able to spot an error.
James Duffield Senior Creative Producer at Twitch spoke about how Twich is now using a new metric to justify if an influencer has a genuine audience that are interested in their content.
As Twitch is a live stream platform, the brand is now measuring using minutes watched. This shows real engagement that is difficult to fake on a livestream. There's also the ability to see people having conversations on the content that they are watching.
Another interesting talk came from Ben Jeffries, CEO at Influencer, who spoke on the challenges that have shaped the influencer industry. He cited one key issue: Fyre Festival, which many news networks hailed as the 'death of influencer marketing'. Yet Ben argued that this event highlighted the power of influencers.
Personally, I think it's great being able to attend Ad Week Europe and as many talks as possible. I've really enjoyed listening to the opinions of the experts, who have been in the industry for a longer period of time while I'm just at the beginning of my journey. It's been valuable to hear their thoughts on the future of the industry.
I look forward to the coming talks during the week.