Publicis intends to acquire Influential as it expands influencer marketing offerings

By Antoinette Siu  •  July 26, 2024  •

Ivy Liu

Publicis Groupe on Thursday said it intends to acquire influencer marketing company and platform Influential to expand its influencer marketing services. The deal is expected to close in late August — financial terms were not made available.

This move comes as various influencer agencies and platforms focus on maturing either the talent and influencer management or technology sides of the business — and in some cases, a hybrid of both. This makes the space ripe for more acquisition, particularly from interested holding companies looking to invest in and expand influencer marketing units.

It also comes as the broader M&A space continues to heat up. Stagwell this month acquired its seventh company of the year as it buys Israel-based social commerce and influencer-focused digital agency LEADERS. The digital agency, which runs an AI influencer platform, joins the Stagwell Marketing Cloud to beef up influencer marketing capabilities and its PR platform PRophet’s tech services.

As Forrester analyst Jay Pattisall noted, Publicis’ purchase will make a strong “data and technology backbone” to scale influencer campaigns for the agency. “Influential’s influencer network and data plus Epsilon’s transactional and audience data are a potent combination to match audience with influencer,” he said, cautioning that it remains unclear how the combination will work with the creative agencies Publicis owns.

“Other holding companies have placed their influencer practices or acquisitions inside creative agencies to provide synergy of brand idea with influencer activations,” he explained. “If Influential sits at the center, like Epsilon, how will they integrate with the different Publicis Groupe creative companies? That lack of integration can be counterproductive to brand consistency.”

Whether that becomes a problem remains to be seen. With Influential’s capabilities in creative and digital and data on creators, Publicis said it will focus on scaling influencer marketing through building out a creator network, integrating customer data through the Epsilon platform (which it acquired in 2019) and maximizing cross-channel outcomes across social campaigns and affiliate channels through Influential’s platform.

Influential founder and CEO Ryan Detert will be positioned “centrally within” Publicis to engage all clients and teams to lead influencer marketing services, according to the holding company. Detert will aim to expand influencer identification, content creation, amplification and measurement for clients. There will be no changes to leadership or at the agency as Detert will continue in his current role.

“We believe that we’re only in third inning of the creator economy, so we wanted to partner with largest and most prestigious holding company with best data and technology in the business to help accelerate our growth,” Detert said.

Arthur Sadoun, CEO of Publicis Groupe, said that Influential sits “at the very cutting edge of the [influencer] sector” — and noted this puts the holding company in a good position as the creator economy is expected to outgrow linear TV in ad spend within the next year.

Publicis and Influential reps did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Other agencies are similarly trying to grow their influencer marketing offerings as the creator economy grows quickly. Ryan Stern, cofounder and CEO of Collectively, the influencer business of Brandtech Group, said this is an example of “tighter integration between creator content and paid media” that is necessary to get the most out of those investments. Brandtech this month launched an AI influencer residency program to speed up experimentation in the marketing space.

“The question is whether the legacy holdco media agencies can adapt their ways of working fast enough to keep up,” Stern added.

For its part, Publicis already operates Fluency, a practice entailing influencer capabilities in media, creative, PR, affiliate and social. Combined with Epsilon’s access to data on 2.3 billion people globally, it will be able to help clients identify creators that target their customers and markets, while also providing the measurement, planning and management across programs.

Founded in 2013, Influential’s AI-backed platform consists of some 100 billion data points in a network of more than 3.5 million creators. Some 90% of its global influencers have more than 1 million followers. This makes it one of the largest influencer marketing companies by revenue.

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