The No. 1 platform for influencer marketing, and why ‘micro’ and ‘nano’ beat ‘mega’ content creators

Welcome to Ad Age Datacenter Weekly, our data-obsessed newsletter for marketing and media professionals. Reading this online? Sign up to get it delivered to your inbox here. Shut down “Facebook is shutting down a source of data that shared ‘device-level’ information about people’s phones to advertisers for purposes of targeting and measuring ad campaigns,” Ad Age’s Garett Sloane reports. “For years, the data had been made available through a marketing partner program that Facebook had closely monitored, but with privacy fears and new laws constraining the digital ad industry, the social network is reconsidering past practices like this one.” Keep reading here. The (very) big marketing picture “GroupM estimates that 2019 worldwide marketing spending totaled $1.6 trillion to $1.9 trillion,” per Ad Age’s Bradley Johnson. “That includes media spending, services (agencies, information technology consultancies focused on marketing), software (ad tech, marketing tech) and a big slice of ‘other’ (data, partner support, events, in-house activities, sales, retail activation, sponsorships).” Learn more in the Ad Age Marketing Fact Pack 2020. Download your free copy here. Baller move Demand-side platform The Trade Desk is breaking its first video ad campaign, George P. Slefo reports, and it’s slated for connected TV programming surrounding the NCAA’s March Madness. “The move is significant,” he writes, “as it is unusual for pure tech companies such as The Trade Desk to run ad campaigns, let alone air them during tentpole events such as March Madness. But it also makes some sense, given that the company is making a huge push into connected TV. In November, The Trade Desk reported that its connected TV sales rose 145 percent year over year, and the company has signed deals with streaming platforms from Amazon, Disney, Comcast and Roku.” BBH New York is behind the campaign. Keep reading here. Influential CreatorIQ, the influencer marketing platform used by the likes of Unilever, Ralph Lauren and Disney, has partnered with Influencer Marketing Hub on an annual report called “State of Influencer Marketing”—and Ad Age Datacenter got an exclusive first look at the 2020 edition. The results come from a survey of more than 4,000 brand marketers as well as an analysis of CreatorIQ’s aggregated influencer campaign performance across its entire database. A few highlights: • Just over 90 percent of influencer campaigns deployed by the survey respondents include Facebook-owned Instagram. Twitter is second with 45 percent, followed by Facebook (40 percent), Alphabet-owned YouTube (20 percent) and Pinterest (10 percent). • Micro influencers (which CreatorIQ defines as content creators with followers in the 10,000 to 99,999 range) and nano influencers (1,000 to 9,999) consistently have the best engagement rates, particularly on Instagram. Brand marketers, according to the survey, are increasingly showing a strong preference for such smaller-reach influencers vs. so-called mega influencers with a million or more followers. • Just over 65 percent of respondents have programs in place to measure the ROI from their influencer campaigns—and the most common measure of influencer marketing performance is conversions/sales. • Two-thirds of survey respondents say they plan to increase their influencer marketing spending over the next 12 months. You can download a free copy of the report here. Just briefly Copy that: “Apple Takes Heat Over ‘Vulnerable’ iOS Cut-and-Paste Data,” per Threatpost. Love and loss: “How State Marriage and Divorce Rates Stack Up,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Classy: “The 9 Best Free Online Data Science Courses In 2020,” via Forbes, which highlights offerings from Harvard, Microsoft and more. ICYMI: “U.S. agency that handles Trump’s secure communication suffered data breach,” via Reuters. Coming up • The Denver chapter of the Digital Analytics Association is hosting an early evening panel discussion (with cocktails and networking) titled “Use it or Lose it: How utilizing your data will help you run an effective and efficient paid search campaign” on March 12. • IBM Developer is teaming up with Stanford University for the second year in a row to present Women in Data Science (WiDS), a conference slated for March 23 in New York City. • Previously: The Feb. 18 edition of Datacenter Weekly highlighted data-focused conferences coming to Orlando, New York City and Las Vegas. • Also: The Feb. 11 edition of Datacenter Weekly highlighted data-focused conferences coming to Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco and Grapevine, Texas. The newsletter is brought to you by Ad Age Datacenter, the industry’s most authoritative source of competitive intel and home to the Ad Age Leading National Advertisers, the Ad Age Agency Report: World’s Biggest Agency Companies and other exclusive data-driven reports. Access or subscribe to Ad Age Datacenter at AdAge.com/Datacenter. Ad Age Datacenter is Kevin Brown, Bradley Johnson and Catherine Wolf. This newsletter was compiled and written by Simon Dumenco.

The No. 1 platform for influencer marketing, and why ‘micro’ and ‘nano’ beat ‘mega’ content creators

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