Influicity has opened up its YouTube influencer marketplace to all types of agencies.
The Toronto- and New York-based company first launched the marketplace in July, inviting brand marketers and media agencies to use its platform to find influencers for social campaigns. This week it opened the platform up to PR firms, content marketing shops and all other agencies.
Several Canadian agencies, including Geometry, Zenith Optimedia and Content Citizen are already using the service.
Influicity works like a search engine for influencers, allowing brands to look for potential partners based on their age, gender, ethnicity, category of influence, location and reach. Given the appetite for for video content from brands, it currently focuses on YouTube users.
According to founder and CEO Jonathan Davids, Influicity has plans to add search tools for brands seeking influencers on other social networks in 2015.
Davids said Influicity’s aims to take the guess work out of influencer marketing. Instead of searching for influencers on their own, marketers can use the tool to identify the ones who are a fit for the brand and have the reach to help move the needle.
The company currently has 140,000 influencers in its system, including about 4,000 Canadians. For brands looking for Canadian eyeballs, however, Davids recommends partnering with influencers who have large Canadian audiences rather than influencers who specifically live in Canada.
Access to the marketplace is via a monthly subscription, costing between $125 and $1,500 depending on the reporting and analytics features the marketer or agencies needs.
As for the price tag of working with the influencers themselves, Davids said it can vary greatly based on factors such as reach, viewer loyalty and demand. Some clients spend just a few hundred dollars on their influencer programs, while Davids said others spend up to hundreds of thousands (big brands that have used the marketplace include Puma and Garnier).
“Pricing was a key issue for us to tackle early on, since most pricing is arbitrary in the influencer space,” Davids said. “Influicity acts as a market maker by setting the fair market value for each influencer. When a client searches for influencers, a price tag is attached to each one.”
