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The startup Influential Is using artificial intelligence to assign influence marketers stock prices based on each person’s ability to reach specific demographics that brands will pay to reach.
Influential started three years ago when the company created an algorithm, essentially a scraping tool, that goes across all of the platforms and looks for people who are in that top one percent level of engagement, Influential CEO and founder Ryan Detert told VentureBeat in a phone interview.
The brand match score that debuts today gives a breakdown how an influence marketer matches with a brand based on engagement levels, more than 50 traits, and reach with specific demographic groups.
Once a brand and an influencer are matched, the influence marketer receives a creative brief via an invite-only smartphone app. Then influence marketers host events or create social media posts with videos, images, or text germane to a brand’s audience.
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“This brand match score that’s being used to choose, is also being used to give us stock price and price influencers as they relate to the value of a specific brand,” Detert said. “It’s not just one-size-fits-all and 10,000 [dollars] to get out of bed in the morning like a talent model, but you’re worth maybe $3,000 to this brand and $6,000 to that brand, then they should pay you more.”
The brand match score is made by calling on IBM Watson APIs like Alchemy, Personality Insight, and Tone Analyzer.
Influence marketers are encouraged to post no more than most once a week on Instagram or 10-20 Twitter posts.
“If you become what we call a NASCAR type and do too many branded deals or start posting inappropriate or wrong stuff and your engagement numbers drop, you are removed from the app,” Detert said. “If you were reading a magazine and every other page was an ad, you’d be angry. If periodically, you’re used to it, you’re OK with it.”
The company is currently working on a feature to automate the selection of influence marketers for brands based on the match score between a brand and an influencer.
Influential is designed for use by CMOs at large companies, as well as agencies who work with influence marketers with hundreds of thousands of social media followers.
Customers include Unilever, Coca-Cola, the United Nations, and Condé Nast, and Vice.
Influential is based in Los Angeles and has 90 employees. Last August Influential raised $5 million, bringing total funds to $15 million raised since its launch in 2014.
