As the influencer marketing market grows, venture investors are paying more attention to startups with related technology and services. Moving beyond consolidation of advertisers and creators, corporations that automate everything from discovering influencers to running campaigns and analyzing results using artificial intelligence (AI) are emerging, drawing interest from conglomerates and venture capital (VC) for their growth potential.
On the 14th, market research firm Statista estimated the global influencer marketing market at about $32.55 billion (about 47 trillion won) last year. The market, which was $9.7 billion in 2020, grew more than threefold in five years. As corporations increase budgets for influencer marketing, which can gauge consumer response faster than traditional ads, the related solutions market is expanding alongside it.
In Korea, influencer marketing platform Pitchering raised a 15.3 billion won Series B round. Pitchering provides services that find influencers suitable for brands and analyze campaign performance based on AI and data analysis. Its technology that distinguishes valid followers of influencers is said to have been highly rated by the market.
The cumulative investment reached 22 billion won, and in addition to existing investors Stick Ventures, Albatross Investment, and MAGNA Investment, Hana Ventures, Kiwoom Investment, Korea Development Bank (KDB), and IBK Corporations Bank also joined the investor lineup.
There are also cases where conglomerates are investing and adopting solutions at the same time. Storyca, an AI-based influencer marketing automation startup, recently raised a seed round. Participants included Amorepacific, Schmidt, a subsidiary accelerator of DSC Investment, Hustle Fund, BonAngels Venture Partners, and Crew Capital.
Storyca analyzes a database of more than 7 million global creators to discover and match influencers suitable for brands and automates the entire process from campaign planning to content delivery management. Amorepacific, which participated in the investment, is also using the solution for its own brand marketing.
In the investment industry, there is a view that as influencer marketing shifts from one-off advertising to a data- and software-based industry, related startups are becoming targets for investment review. Conglomerates are interested because it can improve the marketing efficiency of their own brands, while the investment industry is paying attention because it is a software business with global scalability and recurring revenue.
Along with market growth, debates continue over platform dependence and the accuracy of performance measurement. This is because the influence of influencers can change depending on algorithm or policy changes at platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Although performance measurement technology that determines whether influencer content led to sales is advancing, given the environment where it overlaps with other marketing activities, isolating and measuring only the sales contribution of influencer content is also challenging.
An industry official said, "The competitiveness of solutions depends on how much they can improve data reliability and the accuracy of performance forecasting," and noted, "A trend of startups being acquired and merged into large advertising groups will drive the next phase of this market."