IRI®, a global leader in innovative solutions and services for consumer, CPG, retail and media companies, and Influential, the leading AI influencer technology Social Intelligence™ firm and IBM Watson Developer Partner, today announced an upfront to launch a first-to-market product for influencer marketing, utilizing IRI Campaign Conversion Feed (CCF) on social platforms. Influential will be able to run in-flight optimizations on social branded content campaigns, linking weekly purchase data and offline conversions to ad exposures.
IRI and Influential recognized a need for CPG clients to not only understand the effectiveness of influencer campaigns but also to enable these important marketers to optimize based on daily loyalty card data from customers who were exposed to branded content on social and purchased relevant products online and offline. This solution provides the unique and valuable ability to test which influencer, content and audience generates the most conversions.
As an example of how CCF works on social, Influential has influencers create branded content on social platforms, where they serve the post to consumers who have a high propensity to buy products in a category, like soft drinks. CCF then sees the conversions that the post generated each day. Based on that information, Influential is able to determine where the media dollars should go, which influencers to focus on and what new content to create.
CCF on social platforms is designed to increase campaign efficiency and lift, and optimizations can be made using loyalty card purchase data within days of a conversion. The campaign’s overall effectiveness is then measured post-campaign, where lift results validate the increase in total sales. Using IRI audiences, CCF and post-campaign measurement, ad exposure is matched to business outcomes and becomes a powerful tactic to increase in-store sales.
“Through the relationship we’ve had with IRI since 2017, we have worked with an amazing and dedicated team to innovate first-to-market products and tactics that have pushed forward influencer marketing with a focus on actual in-store sales, rather than any other proxy metric for sales,” said Ryan Detert, CEO of Influential. “We’re taking these innovations to an exciting new level by launching Campaign Conversion Feed on social, allowing our clients the ability to maximize the effectiveness of their campaigns through optimization in-campaign and ultimately their ad spend.”
“Influencer marketing has increasingly become an essential tool for the CPG industry to drive actionable results, helping consumers discover new products to meet their needs, driving traffic into stores and increasing sales,” said Nishat Mehta, president of the IRI Media Center of Excellence. “Partnering with Influential to create Campaign Conversion Feed for social platforms only helps to raise the bar of innovation in this nascent and rapidly growing space.”
About IRI
IRI is a leading provider of big data, predictive analytics and forward-looking insights that help CPG, OTC health care organizations, retailers, financial services and media companies grow their businesses. A confluence of major external events — a change in consumer buying habits, big data coming into its own, advanced analytics and personalized consumer activation — is leading to a seismic shift in drivers of success in all industries. With the largest repository of purchase, media, social, causal and loyalty data, all integrated on an on-demand, cloud-based technology platform, IRI is empowering the personalization revolution, helping to guide its more than 5,000 clients around the world in their quests to remain relentlessly relevant, capture market share, connect with consumers, collaborate with key constituents and deliver market-leading growth. For more information, visit www.iriworldwide.com.
About Influential
Influential is the Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) influencer technology. Leveraging a network of over 1 million social media influencers and celebrities, Influential’s technology powers seamless talent discovery, comprehensive brand safety, and creative and execution services. Through strategic partnerships with first- and third-party data providers, Influential’s Optimized Paid Media offering enables bespoke targeting and measurement solutions, including both online and offline attribution, such as sales lift, TV tune-in lift, foot traffic, as well as brand lift studies. Influential works with Fortune 500 brands, including Walmart, McDonald’s, Pepsi, NFL, Nestlé, General Mills, Toyota, Samsung and Sony Pictures. With offices in Los Angeles, NYC and Las Vegas, Influential is a developer partner of IBM Watson, a strategic partner of WME and Oracle, and a Facebook and Instagram Marketing Partner. (www.influential.co)
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200107005846/en/