Customer Story How ION Empowers its Clients With Real-Time Insights Through CreatorIQ’s Data Integration

Steven Lai, SVP at ION, leads the agency across client services teams, account management groups, strategists, data analysts, and talent managers. Steven has observed a significant evolution over his 17+ years in the industry, with a notable shift towards creator-centric brand building. When sharing his passion for creator marketing, Steven says, “The future of brand building will be creator-centric and creator-led. Right now, we're seeing that partnership with brands and creators to promote those brands. But I think in the future, we're probably going to see those creator-founded brands leading these spaces as well.”

Creator-led marketing is essential to ION’s clients. The agency's strength lies in pairing the right creators with the right brands to tell authentic and compelling stories that resonate with audiences.

ION helps its client brands effectively connect with their target audiences through creator partnerships across five key areas: creator discovery, creative ideation, content production, content amplification, and performance tracking and reporting.

As ION leverages its expertise in authentic storytelling and creator partnerships, centralized program management and a comprehensive system of record are key to driving meaningful audience connections that can transform brand perceptions.

Despite having strong brand and talent relationships, and an industry-respected internal management team, ION hadn’t invested deeply in a streamlined creator management platform.

At its core, finding the perfect match between creators and brand objectives is crucial. This requires a deep understanding of each creator’s unique connection with their audience, storytelling style, and content tone. Achieving this level of specificity is challenging, especially when scaling campaigns for multiple clients. “The challenge with scale is exactly that, scale. How do you build the right kinds of relationships, work with the right kinds of partners, and do that in a way that can scale over tens, dozens, or hundreds of creators at a time?” says Steven. “Being able to scale properly means making sure you have the right fit every single time.”

In order to understand a brand’s audience, pair the right creators with that brand, and analyze campaign performance, ION relies on data. According to Steven, the agency historically analyzed creator marketing KPIs manually, pulling data points from disparate social channels and systems while aggregating the information in spreadsheets. Making data-driven decisions was time-consuming and challenged the efficiency of the organization’s operations. As the agency scaled, the need for greater efficiency in managing workflows, communications, and reporting was crucial. Optimizing these areas would allow the team to focus on the more creative aspects of campaigns, such as building authentic connections and developing engaging content.

In the fast-paced world of creator marketing, finding the right creators based on brand objectives requires a data-driven approach. For ION, leveraging the CreatorIQ API has been transformative, shifting the agency from manual, spreadsheet-heavy processes to a streamlined, efficient system.

This powerful tool enables ION to deeply analyze creator and content performance, and generate custom data visualizations tailored to each client. “We use the CreatorIQ API in so many different ways,” Steven says. “One of the main ways is to track all of our content and analyze it at a deep, deep level, so that we can understand who the trending creators are within our program, see the top content performance, and really glean insights on content types, engagement rates, and all the different metrics that the API provides back to us.”

With data reporting and analysis automated through CreatorIQ, the ION team is able to focus on the core creative and relationship-building elements. “Using CreatorIQ to help streamline a lot of those operational elements has been key,” Steven says.

By providing real-time insights into creator and content performance, CreatorIQ not only enhances operational efficiency but also ensures that ION can confidently recommend the right, brand-safe creators to its clients, fostering authentic and impactful partnerships.

Through ION’s partnership with CreatorIQ, the agency can more efficiently and effectively turn creator, content, and campaign data into real-time insights that power informed recommendations to its clients. “Integrating CreatorIQ's API with our proprietary data platform allows our clients to have information from all of their campaigns at their fingertips,” says Steven. “Our clients are able to see at any moment how the content is performing, understand efficiencies and cost-effectiveness, and get all the different data points that are important to them.”

Additionally, with CreatorIQ’s customizable brand safety checks and compliance measures, Steven’s team is able to quickly and confidently assess whether a creator poses any risk to a brand’s reputation, ensuring that every creator recommendation aligns with client values and safety standards. “We want to make sure that anyone we're proposing back to our clients is safe and ultimately the right fit,” Steven says, “so quickly being able to see that in CreatorIQ is immensely valuable to us.”

Through confident creator recommendations and real-time campaign reporting, ION continues to foster trust with its clients and deliver impactful creator partnerships and campaigns aligned to business objectives.