How is AI changing influencer marketing? | AI in business #114

What is influencer marketing and what does AI have to do with it?

Influencer marketing relies on brands working with influencers-individuals with a significant online presence, particularly on social media, who have the ability to shape the opinions and behaviors of their audiences. Traditionally, brands have based this type of collaboration on:

• reach – the number of impressions of content created and published by the influencer,
• number of followers – people who watch the influencer’s social media profiles,
• influencer engagement – the frequency and channels through which they publish.

Thanks to artificial intelligence, the process has become much more advanced and personalized. But the real power of influencer marketing lies in the relationship between creators and their communities. This is where AI comes in, providing tools to deeply analyze these relationships and optimize campaigns.

Let’s start with an example. In 2021, Samsung ran a #TeamGalaxy campaign with influencers who were chosen based on an AI selection. Algorithms analyzed data to find creators that perfectly matched the brand’s image and target audience. The result was a campaign that generated more than 126 million impressions and significantly increased brand awareness (source: https://shortyawards.com/12th/samsung-teamgalaxy).

Source: ShortyAwards (https://shortyawards.com/12th/samsung-teamgalaxy)

How can AI help in the selection of influencers?

While choosing the right influencer is a key challenge to a successful campaign, the secret to AI’s success in influencer marketing is its ability to detect subtle patterns and connections that go beyond superficial statistics. AI helps in several ways.

Analyzing the influencer’s audience

AI systems analyze the demographics, location, interests, and engagement of an influencer’s followers. In this way, a brand can accurately determine whether the audience of an influencer overlaps with the target audience of a campaign. One example of a tool that uses this method is HypeAuditor (https://hypeauditor.com/), whose AI algorithms identify ideal influencers for a given audience from more than 138 million accounts on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, X and Twitch.

Assessing the authenticity and quality of an influencer

Detecting bots, fake followers and artificial engagement is another strength of AI in influencer marketing. For example, NeoReach (https://neoreach.com/) uses an advanced AI engine to analyze profiles for signs of undesirable practices, such as buying followers or fake likes. This allows brands to verify an influencer’s authenticity and reliably assess their true reach.

Matching content and branding

AI not only finds the right influencers, but also analyzes the content they publish to ensure a perfect match with the brand’s image and values. For example, Upfluence (https://www.upfluence.com/) uses machine learning to identify influencers’ categories and topics. The platform’s algorithms identify the topic categories and communication styles that influencers prefer. This is key to keeping communications consistent and building audience trust.

Source: DALL·E 3, prompt: Marta M. Kania (https://www.linkedin.com/in/martamatyldakania/)

AI for influencer marketing

Artificial intelligence not only streamlines the process of selecting influencers but also provides extensive support for the creators themselves. Here’s how AI can help influencers:

1. Optimizing content. Artificial intelligence helps analyze engagement, comments, and other signals from audiences to identify the types of content that resonate most with a community. Influencers can then fine-tune their content to maximize effectiveness and reach. For example, a fashion influencer can receive recommendations for video formats or photo styles that generate the most interaction.
2. Optimizing publication strategies. AI algorithms can analyze the best publication times, frequency, and content formats to maximize an influencer’s reach and effectiveness.
3. Enhancing authenticity. Paradoxically, AI is one of the most powerful tools for maintaining authenticity in the face of increasing commercialization. AI can help strike the right balance by providing insight into audience expectations and suggesting topics that will be perceived as natural and consistent with the influencer’s image.

Źródło: Nobody Sausage (https://www.nobodysausage.com/)

Virtual influencers — the vanguard of AI in marketing

The multi-million dollar reach of Barbie, Lu to Magal, Miquela Sousa aka Lil Muquela, or perhaps the story of KFC’s Virtual Colonel, the first virtual influencer created directly by a brand?

Each of these digital characters has a crowd of loyal fans. Barbie, known to all as the fashion doll, was created in 1959 by American businesswoman Ruth Handler. Since then, she has continued to influence the market. While traveling in Europe, Handler saw the German doll Bild Lilli, which inspired her to create the iconic doll that has endured for decades. Barbie is not just a toy – through numerous campaigns with brands such as Xbox and Forever 21, she has become a digital influencer with an impressive reach as evidenced by her followers – 11.4 million subscribers on YouTube, 2.4 million on Instagram and 1.1 million on TikTok (https://theconversation.com/barbie-isnt-just-a-movie-star-now-shes-also-a-virtual-social-media-influencer-207885).

Lu do Magalu, on the other hand, is a virtual influencer who rose to fame as the spokesperson for Magalu, one of Brazil’s largest retail companies. It was created to interact with customers and to help improve the online experience when shopping. With more than 24 million fans on various social media platforms, Lu demonstrates how virtual characters can effectively support brands by sharing unboxing videos, product tips and news.

Lil Miquela, also known as Miquela Sousa, is a model and fashion icon who rose to fame as a virtual robot. Created by Los Angeles-based Brud, she made her debut on Instagram in April 2016. Miquela, who has worked with luxury fashion brands such as Prada, Dior and Calvin Klein, has amassed more than 2.6 million followers on Instagram, demonstrating that virtual characters can have a real impact on the fashion industry and social issues.

Colonel from KFC is a virtual character that has appeared as part of a campaign by the well-known fast food chain. While he doesn’t have the reach of other virtual characters, this is an interesting attempt by the brand to create a virtual influencer that shows the variety of ways they can be used in marketing.

Summary and future prospects of influencer marketing

Fully digital characters and the ability to use AI to clone the look and voice of real people open up new possibilities for creative expression and brand personalization.

The future of influencer marketing is seen as a symbiosis of human creativity and the power of artificial intelligence. Brands that effectively leverage this technology will gain an advantage in building deeper relationships with consumers.

However, this future comes with some ethical challenges. Brands and influencers need to ensure transparency, privacy and responsible use of AI. They can do this, for example, by informing audiences about the use of generated characters and the use of celebrity pictures, which needs to be clarified in the age of deep fakes.

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