Our mission as a company has always been to give brands the tools they need to help creators share their experiences with the products they love.
This simple idea has accelerated rapidly across the creator economy over the past twelve months as creators have become an integral part of every progressive brand’s growth and customer experience strategies. We are investing aggressively in our technology and data solutions to ensure that our customers have access to a best-in-class influencer marketing platform to evolve and mature these strategies.
That’s why we’re pleased to reveal that we have received $40 million in new financing to extend our leadership position in the influencer marketing industry.
We’ve attracted top-tier investors since the early days of the company, and we’re proud to announce that each one of those investors is participating in this new round of funding. They include TVC Capital, Kayne Partners Fund (the growth private equity group of Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors), Affinity Group, and Unilever Ventures. We’re extraordinarily grateful for their continued support and confidence.
Additionally, we’re honored to add a new investor in Silver Lake Waterman to the CreatorIQ family. Here’s what Shawn O’Neill, Managing Director and Group Head of Silver Lake Waterman, had to say about the group’s investment:
“Influencer marketing is a key area of opportunity and differentiation that brands and agencies are eager to address with next-generation analytics and automation. CreatorIQ’s strength in data analysis and management is driving its leadership position and we are excited to partner with them to help drive their continued growth and market adoption.”
This latest round of funding doubles our total capital raised to over $80 million and will allow us to invest even further in our data, commerce and measurement technologies to better solve what matters most to us – our customers’ business goals and objectives.
Here’s where we’re going, fueled by this new round of funding. The three areas of immediate focus in the months ahead are:
Data & Measurement
As the influencer marketing industry grows in size, scope, and maturity, it’s critical to develop ironclad measurement and benchmarking practices capable of satisfying the rigorous standards of the most stringent analysts.
Influencer marketing efforts have become incorporated into broader business goals and outcomes. As these strategies continue to advance, channel data will get left behind in favor of advanced omnichannel programs.
In this new environment, measurement programs become even more crucial and meaningful. More sophisticated efforts require more sophisticated data, requiring scalable solutions to elevate influencer marketing metrics to the same level of importance as more traditional business KPIs.
In order to meet these new performance standards, brands need to tap into the power of the creator economy. That means scaling their measurement with the most advanced proprietary insights in the industry. By leveraging first-party influencer, conversion, and sales data, influencer marketing teams can identify their brand’s most loyal advocates and convert them into influential brand partners.
Taken together, the need to integrate and manage new data, analyze blended datasets, alter workflows, and update training and integrated strategy requirements is greater than ever before. That’s a solution we intend to provide by leveraging our data science capabilities alongside our customers’ first-party data sets.
Commerce
Social commerce is poised to revolutionize the influencer marketing landscape, helping drive new ways for consumers to transact directly with brands through creator-centric engagement. Nearly every social media platform is creating native commerce solutions to help creators monetize their following, presenting a frictionless sales experience for customers – and a massive commercial opportunity for brands. By continuing our investment in advancing our platform’s commercial functionalities, CreatorIQ is developing solutions to help brands capitalize on this evolution, with key integrations such as Shopify, LiveRamp and key affiliate platforms, to help our clients move beyond the “influencer marketing as brand awareness” paradigm and give our customers the tools they need to scalably drive sales and revenue.
Maturity
Brands don’t develop sophisticated influencer marketing programs overnight. They pass through several stages as they ramp up their strategies and capabilities. Our job is to both assist them in their current stage, and nurture them into the next one, wherever they are in their influencer marketing journey. From the early, reactive stages of establishing first-generation influencer marketing programs, to automating and unifying processes, to the later, proactive stages of integrating the customer and creator experience, we are there to assist.
To continue our leadership position in this space, we must continue to evolve as rapidly as the surrounding social media landscape. As social platforms create new tools for creators to engage and monetize their followers, and as creators incorporate these features into their activities, so must brands evolve their influencer marketing strategy to adapt. We’ll continue to offer the resources to help them do so, and the support they need to continue their digital transformation.