There has been a lot of conversation recently about how the various privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA) and tracking modifications (ITP 2.2, Google Sandbox) will impact addressable media. Both media buyers and sellers have been working overtime to develop customized or proprietary solutions to address these changes but there has been very little attention paid to how this will impact influencer marketing.
While most people feel that the impact on addressable media will be largely limiting, these changes will be both good and bad for influencer marketing. I recently moderated a panel of industry experts at the Influencer Fraudnomics Summit in NYC on this topic and the conversation was incredibly insightful as we start to contextualize how these changes with impact how we partner with influencers. Let’s first breakdown a highlight reel of key aspects of each change:
In a nutshell, these changes will both create greater opportunity for influencer marketing by elevating its role in the overall marketing mix as well as pose some challenges that need to be addressed through greater rigor and modified processes. First the good.
For the most part the industry agrees that, even with the solutions being developed by buyers and sellers, programmatic media will get slightly less precise. And with less precision comes the need to deliver greater value with each and every interaction. We need to make every impression count by delivering content that will connect with consumers in a meaningful way. Influencers are amazing at this. By partnering with influencers to create content that is adjacent in theme and message to brand-driven content, we begin to create a meaningful surround sound that can deliver the value that is critical to mitigating this reduction in precision. Bottomline, influencers will help brands deliver real value and will occupy an elevated role in the overall marketing mix.
Influencers also have a built-in GDPR compliance mechanism due to the nature of their business and how they communicate. When a consumer follows an influencer or hashtag on a social platform, that is considered a freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous opt-in. Check!
Ok, now the challenges. But they really aren’t that bad. The removal of link decoration is a real bummer for both brands and influencers trying to attribute sales or business results especially considering 84% of marketers feel proving the ROI of influencer marketing is a challenge. This change will have a large impact on accurately attributing long-tail sales of affiliate programs. However, this can be offset by using coupons or promo codes at check-out to make sure the influencer gets credit for the sale. Beauty and Fashion influencers can also continue to be a part of networks like RewardStyle and their app LIKEtoKNOW.it to make sure they get their fair share.
Oftentimes influencers collect 1P data on their sites or blog and it’s important that they are GDPR compliant with their data collection – especially if a brand’s engagement with an influencer includes a direct marketing component (ie inclusion in a newsletter). I recommend reviewing their data collection practices as a part of the manual review most brands and agencies do as part of vetting prospective partners.
Data scraping of influencers followers’ accounts will be limited and give us less data to use to match them with brands. Well, it is what it is. Data scraping is a practice done by some aggregators to provide marketers with more data on the followers of individual influencers. This practice will be phased out and we will only be able to use the data that was collected in a compliant manner or is publicly available to gain these types of insights.
Net net, while the regulatory and tracking changes being made to data use and collection are having wide reaching impacts on marketing and media, the impact to influencer marketing is both beneficial as well as requiring of process modification. As an industry we have to be prepared to evolve as consumers reclaim ownership of their personal data and demand ethical and transparent behavior from marketers.