Whalar's Alex North talks measurement and evaluation

Speaker A: Hello, I'm Scott Guthrie and welcome to episode 54 of the Influencer uh Marketing Lab. And don't forget to sign up to the companion newsletter@creatorbriefing.com.

Speaker B: It's very nice to get that 2.4x snapshot of ROI, but what would happen if we'd increased our spend in creative marketing? And in that instance Nielsen had guided us that you could have doubled your spend with creator marketing and if you had done that, uh, your ROI would have gone up by 20%. That helps to fuel conversations with clients.

Speaker A: This episode, I'm in conversation with Alex north, head of media measurement and analytics across EMEA at Waler. In this episode, we discuss where the measuring return on investment within creative marketing is evolving and if so, how how marketers can best help brands navigate choice and challenges in quantifying impact. We look at measurement in the wild, digging into a case study and we look over the brow of the hill to what's coming next in measurement within our UH industry. The Influencer Marketing Lab has been made possible through a paid sponsorship with Tagger by Sprout Social Media. Tagger by Sprout Social is a global leader in revolutionizing how top brands and agencies harness data and analytics to drive creator UH and influencer UH marketing strategies. Trusted by global enterprises, Tagger is a disruptive SaaS solution that offers unparalleled expertise. Leveraging API partnerships with major social channels. Tagger connects millions of brand and influencer profiles to to billions of social data points, offering the industry's most robust social intelligence and actionable insights. Tagger's platform provides powerful analytics all in one capabilities and strategic integrations for efficient campaign workflows. To learn more, visit www.taggermedia.com. now on with the show. This week on the Influencer Marketing Lab, I am, um, in conversation with Alex north, head of media measurement and analytics across EMEA at Wailer. Alex leads a team responsible for enabling and scaling efficient usage of media and measurement across creator marketing initiatives to ensure content is used correctly on the right platforms and with quantifiable metrics driving growth for all. Before joining Whaler, Alex was head of Measurement Partner Management at UH Meta, where ultimately his role was to help advertisers understand the impact of their marketing spend on Meta platforms. Prior to Meta, Alex held key measurement roles at media agencies Zenith, OPSA Media and Ph.D. and research providers Kantar and Nielsen or welcome to the Influencer Marketing Lab, Alex.

Speaker B: Thank you, Scott. Great to be here and thank you for having me on the show.

Speaker A: Well, thank you very much for Agreeing to be on. Listen, you're very well, eminently, uh, well placed to talk on behalf of this space. I'm really keen to get straight into this. So let's tee up the first question. The global influencer marketing market size has more than tripled since 2019. Last year, 2023, the market was estimated at, uh, just north of 21 billion. 21.1 billion, according to Statista. More money coming into the sector, obviously a good thing, but no doubt with higher spend comes greater attention to the bottom line. How has measurement and evaluation risen to the challenge? And more simply put, how is measuring roi, uh, within creator marketing evolving?

Speaker B: Very good question. Uh, and I guess that one initial piece to start on is has it risen to the challenge, what with increasing spend in creative marketing? Uh, I don't think it has entirely. In all truth, I think it is rising to the challenge. But there needs to be a lot more focus on the way that we apply measurement practice and how we really, truly understand the business impact of the investment in influencer and creator marketing. There's definitely a good foundation in place, but I don't think we're quite there yet and I'm sure we'll dive into the specifics. There's in my mind still too much of a focus on some of the, what some people call vanity metrics that don't really give you a true view of the impact of a, uh, campaign investment on business metrics. And I think it's the business piece that is key to focus in on. What does it truly mean to invest in this space for a brand? Are you driving awareness of the brand? Are you driving consideration, intent, sales? These are the kind of things that brands truly care about and should necessarily be a focus alongside other metrics that still give you a valuable read. But those are the core pieces that we need to focus in on and steer the measurement towards understanding how your investment is driving those sorts of pieces and why as well, so you can really inform your investment going forward. And so I think what we're starting to see, and I'd like to see a lot more of, is a shift towards more established, robust practices that really get under the hood of those sorts of things with a level of comparability as well that you need when you're comparing an investment in a media tactic like creative marketing with tv, with broader social, with other media platforms. And so I see there are definitely some early investments in this space in terms of doing the kind of measurement that I think we're going to see a lot more of. Going forwards. But there's a real opportunity to guide brands and for the industry to talk about this kind of topic more to understand how to do this well and how to employ it in the right way to really maximize the value of what's driven from the investment. Because I think that's really truly, um, where that increasing investment is going to be justified. We're not going to get to the aspirations that a lot of people are putting out there for the coming five or ten years unless there is the right measurement framework to support it.

Speaker A: There's a lot to unpack there. Alex, let's start with a sort of a, uh, Janet and John entry point. You mentioned vanity metrics versus business metrics. Just get me up to speed very quickly on what you mean by vanity metrics as opposed to intent metrics, uh, and ultimately impact metrics. Give me a few examples of those three categories.

Speaker B: Sure. When you look at something like vanity metrics, I'm thinking of like a like or comment or shares or saves, sort of the social metrics that are tied to uh, activity on platforms like TikTok or Facebook or Instagram, something like that. I'm not saying that they're not valuable in any form. I think they definitely provide uh, an interesting insight into the level of on platform engagement. But I think very few brands invest in uh, a uh, media tact or investor in a campaign because they're looking to drive likes. I think what they're ultimately trying to get to is a shift in the perception of their brand and a shift in people's behavior when it comes to consideration or intent when it comes to purchasing their brand. And so I guess that's the distinction for me. Sort of the data that is available doesn't necessarily paint the, the complete picture, which is why I think it's important to get to the foundation of what matters to a brand in terms of the measurement if you are going to get that complete picture of what matters to you. And so the effectiveness measures I think are very important to focus on when it comes to things like are people considering your brand more? Are you shifting the way that people think about your brand? Are people planning to buy your brand more than they were before having seen that ad? Uh, and what are the drivers of those shifts in the way they think and their uh, potential behavior? So that's kind of the distinction in my mind, as I say, not kind of belittling the vanity metrics, but I think you need a lot more if you want to understand the impact of a campaign.

Speaker A: And something else that you mentioned was established robust frameworks, influencer marketing or creator marketing increasingly part of integrated marketing campaigns. So when we talk about measurement and evaluation, are you talking about how we can measure cross channel metrics?

Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. You can't really uh, ever measure in a silo because you need a point of comparison to know whether what you're seeing is good. So as an example, if your campaign has uh, an awareness or consideration lift of 2.5%, is that good? Should I have expected five? Uh, should I have expected one, for example? And so I think context is key compared to other brands that might have advertised within this tactic like creator marketing. But we're increasingly dealing with global brands, even local regional brands who are investing a lot of money in a cross media campaign. Uh, and so what they're looking for is an understanding of how the various levers they're investing in are working. And you're not going to get that true understanding and that true comparability if you're using different metrics across the different levers. And I guess this harps back to our discussion about vanity metrics. So if you're looking at sales and ROI and um, consideration and perception across everything else in creative marketing, you've got likes and shares, then it's not comparable. You need to be talking about consistent metrics, um, but ideally consistent measures that can tell you and weigh up the value you're getting from your different levers in the same solution with the same metrics so that you can judge what, what the optimal mix might be. And this is an area that we're thinking a lot about, uh, at Whaler M, I'm talking to a lot of clients about techniques such as marketing mix modeling, uh, which clients have been using for decades to get to this kind of understanding, understanding and apply it correctly and accurately to creative marketing.

Speaker A: Thanks Alex. Scrolling back to sort of measuring what matters. How best can influencer markets help brands navigate this choice and challenges in quantifying the impact?

Speaker B: There's a real challenge there because there is lot of data out there, uh, there is choice in solutions to use, choice in partners to use, uh, cost of solutions as well, um, versus other elements of a campaign. We always talk to clients about the balance between how much you invest in influencers, for example, uh, and paid media versus something like measurement. And we get questions about is it going to tell me something useful or is it going to tell me something I already know and can I use it ultimately to make informed business decisions? And so I think the role that we can play as influencer and creator marketing experts and measurement experts is to guide brands towards clarity on what truly matters, uh, and how to quantify this in the best possible way. And so have lots of conversations with clients about, okay, what are you trying to achieve here? Some brands want to drive awareness and consideration and intent and sales in the same advertising campaign. It's sometimes a challenge to walk people through that entire funnel in one ad. And so you kind of, you want to dive into what are you trying to achieve? Where are we now? Where are you now as a brand? Uh, what do you want to try and achieve? And so how do we cater for that and how do we measure that? And so once you've got the clear objectives, you can then start having a conversation about, okay, what solutions are out there that can help you quantify that and whether the campaign has been successful, what would you trust, what's transparent and so you understand and you're clear on the methodology, what, ideally, what's rooted in science, and so you're confident that it is a robust technique. What can you afford as part of your investment in the campaign? And we are real advocates for testing and learning frameworks. So trying to be clear on hypotheses, you want to test gaps in knowledge that you want to try and fill. So being very deliberate about the measurement that you're running so that you learn something, you can iterate on it, and you can do better next time. And so that's the kind of guidance that I see practitioners such as us can provide to brands. And then what we can also do is build our knowledge of the space in terms of what works, build our expertise and, um, build partnerships and collaboration with others in the industry, particularly research practitioners, to try and lean on the right solutions and evolve solutions, uh, to cater for advertising needs. And I know you've had, um, this, that and David on this podcast before, um, fan of, fan of their work and the conversations that you had. Absolutely. I think that kind of work, talking about brand lift, talking about the emotional engagement that people have with campaigns, is definitely the kind of things that we want to be, uh, seeing more of and talking to brands about. We have quite a close partnership at Whaler with a company called Element Human. Uh, they are a really good partner in terms of helping us understand creator marketing, measure it, and giving brands the kind of insight they need. So I think that's how we can guide brands and essentially the obligation that we have to keep evolving the guidance that we can provide.

Speaker A: Well, Alex, uh, thanks for the shout out to previous, uh, episodes and I'LL include those links in the show notes. And thank you for demonstrating proof of research.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: Before you came on the show. Listen, everything you've said so far sounds very sensible, uh, absolutely right away. But let's try and sort of focus now on the practical side of it. What does it mean from, from a practical side, can you share some practical learnings and innovations in measurement, something that we can get our teeth into?

Speaker B: Absolutely. So I guess building on my reference to one of the partners we work with, Element Human, um, I think one of the good things about them as a company and their uh, solution is that it balances quite established uh, methodology in terms of showing an ad to a group of people, not showing it to another group of people and then surveying both. So you can get a measure of the impact of uh, having seen that ad. And they pair that established survey based technique with quite an innovative use of biometrics. And so by using the webcam on a laptop or a mobile phone for example, they can start uh, diving into the level of attention to the screen where people are looking at on the screen as they go through and scroll through the social feed past the ad that we're testing, for example. And so they've got that measure of attention. They can also facially code the emotion that people are going through as they consume that content. And so they can get some measures of joy, happiness, sadness, surprise, for example. And so I quite like that balance between the established uh, measurement practices and getting to the kind of metrics that you see across other media, the likes of purchase intent and consideration with the more innovative techniques with biometrics. And so we've been working with Element Human for a number of years now, uh, and we recently conducted a meta analysis of all the studies that we had run with them to understand whether it steered us towards any best practices, any nuances in our understanding of what works within creator marketing. And so we looked at just under 650 studies that ran across the US and EMEA, uh, we looked at Instagram and TikTok, uh, campaigns that ran across both of those. And we found that on average creative marketing works. Uh, you would expect that because of the nature of the content or it's authentic, it speaks to an audience who are following the creators or kind of off the mindset of the followers of uh, a given creator. It worked in terms of driving brand awareness. On average you see a 13% uplift in brand awareness from people seeing a creator ad, um, for a given brand versus those who hadn't seen the ad. What's particularly interesting is that without necessarily trying, and I'll elaborate on that in a second, we saw on average an uplift in purchasing tech about 7% from uh, every asset that was tested, every creator asset that was tested. And I say without necessarily intending because historically creator marketing has been an upper funnel, more of an upper funnel play driving awareness about a brand driving consideration. Uh, and so it's interesting to see that it's still driving a behavioral intent based on the data that we've got. And this is data going back as I say three years. But we're seeing definite shift off the back of these kind of insights towards clients looking at creative marketing, influencer marketing as a potential full funnel play. Uh, and so there is evidence that you can drive behavioral change off the back of creative marketing. If we look at the year on year data, we see actually on average purchase intent impact rising over time because more clients are understanding best practice, they're trying it, they're realizing that it is possible and it is, it is driving value for them. And so this body of uh, information that element Human has provided to us is really interesting to understand these overall norms but also nuances. Uh, and there are obviously sample biases when you kind of look at a data set, but there are differences in terms of the norms when you look across markets, when you look across platforms like uh, Instagram versus TikTok for example. And um, particularly when you look at product category. And so as you can imagine there will be differences in the way that people consume a beauty category ad versus an FMCG ad versus a technology ad. There'll be different purchasing cycles, there will be different levels of aspiration. And so this kind of data is incredibly important to guide a client within one of those categories on what good looks like. So you can then say the benchmark is lower for this category and so your campaign performance is good compared to that, ah, versus the overall average, for example. This steers us on um, benchmarks on norms and on what clients could potentially expect. It also steers us on creative best practices. So what has done the best? It is the ads that have the early products and brand queues. Uh, it's not entirely unexpected. It is those that are authentic to the voice of the creator, for example, uh, it is those that are built specifically for the platform so they leverage interesting editing and overlays and interactive options on TikTok, for example. These are the kind of things that we can tease out using the Element Human solution. But I would just add, and I've been talking for a Little while. But I would add kind of a second potential innovation in that. While it's great to have that kind of body of evidence on creator marketing, referencing our earlier point about comparability, you need to know whether that's good in the context of the other media that brands are investing in. We touched on marketing mix or media mix modeling a little bit earlier. We've invested in this space with, uh, Nielsen, uh, globally respected research practitioner. So not necessarily an innovation in terms of mmm, but innovative use of it for creative marketing. And we wanted to understand whether MMM could be used to measure creator marketing and what it showed. And so we looked at 20 campaigns from across 20, 21, 2022, uh, across the category of CPG and personal care. Uh, this was across the US and the UK and we wanted to understand, as I say, what it showed in terms of the impact of, of the creator activity for these campaigns. What it found was for every dollar spent on the creator marketing activity, it returns 2.4 dollars back. So 2.4x ROI. Very positive return on investment from the creator marketing activity. What was particularly interesting is the fact that that was the highest return of all of the platforms that were used as part of those campaigns. And that's not to say that that will be the case for every instance, for every brand. But this is across aggregated analysis across a range of different brands within, uh, a vertical. And it showed that creative marketing works. It actually showed that return on investment increased over time with cost efficiency and with best practice employment, which is not something you see elsewhere. And it showed that creative marketing was really punching above its weight. So it's a fascinating demonstration, uh, of why you need to lean on these established techniques and lean on comparability because you've then got, uh, those data points that allow you to compare creative marketing as a tactic with other tactics and say, is the balance of spend right here. Am I spending enough on these various tactics and should I tweak things?

Speaker A: Well, Alex, you probably need to lie down if not a glass of water.

Speaker B: I know that was a lot. Sorry, I apologize.

Speaker A: I let you run and run because it's fascinating and there uh, was no need for me to add anything to just pulling it back a little bit. So we were talking about, historically we think of creator marketing as upper funnel, but now we can demonstrate that it's a full Funnel. Play brand lift 13%, uplift purchase intent up 7%. Is that across all categories or is that specific? Categories?

Speaker B: Yeah, that was across all categories that we've measured. So we, yeah, we've measured 600 and just under 650 pieces of creator content across beauty, across technology, across sportswear, across a number of different categories. Yes. And we can tease out that nuance in the data.

Speaker A: And just to uh, underscore the importance of benchmarking against other media channels, but also other campaigns within the same vertical and other verticals as well. That's the important element here, I think.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Just providing that context as to what success looks like and what you can expect. We talk to a lot of clients and they want an understanding of, okay, if we invest with you, uh, in this campaign here, what would good look like? What would you expect to see? What would our return be? That guidance has proved crucial and the

Speaker A: last uh, one I wanted to pull out was the creator content developed with your company drove ROI of 2.4 times. That was correct.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's measured by the Nielsen study.

Speaker A: Well that's obviously an epic stat and one that we should uh, all latch onto. And just to remind uh, listeners that comes from your creators measure up analyzing the impact on um, results. White paper, correct?

Speaker B: Uh, yes, yeah, absolutely. There's more detail on our website.

Speaker A: I'll uh, link out to that in the show notes as well. The influencer, uh, marketing lab has been made possible through a paid sponsorship with Tagger by Sprout Social. Tagger's discovery tool lets you apply hundreds of different filters to their huge database so you can find exactly the influencers you want that perfectly match your campaign. I've seen agencies and brands discover high value influencers in less than quarter of an hour. Tagger's affinity tool takes discovery a step further by showing you an influencer's brand affinity. It's, it means you're able to partner with influencers who are most likely to enjoy your brand or product. It helps you find audiences who already have an affinity with you. Tagger, uh, by Sprout Social focuses on their customers success. When you sign up to their platform, you're given a dedicated customer success manager. They guide you through everything from onboarding, um, to training to just checking in and making sure you're finding success with the platform. When you're running an influencer campaign, sometimes it can be difficult to measure your success. But it's easy to report your campaign data with Tagger by Sprout Social. Their modular report builder lets you pull accurate real time data directly from social media platforms. You can choose which metrics matter most to you and to your clients. Meeting, meaning you can customize the data that you show in every report. Something that can be overlooked when you're choosing an influencer marketing platform is the quality of the data. Tagger has direct API access to all major social media platforms. This gives Tagger users access to 100% accurate real time data that's gathered responsibly. You can't plan a good strategy if you're not looking at quality data and if you're looking to scale your influencer marketing efforts. Tagger by Sprout Social is a truly global solution. Its availability in more than 10 languages and the ability to make multi currency payments directly on platform gives brands a huge advantage when running multinational or multilingual influencer campaigns. If you want to see how Tagger by Sprout Social can work for you, go to taggermedia.com request demo. So we've talked about the theory, we've talked about the practicalities, but how does all of this work in the wild? Do you have any case studies you can share?

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think one of the ones that springs to mind for me is a campaign from last year for Britvic for their Robinsons fruit drink brand. It uh, was called Guess my Gargle. It's quite an interesting case study and one I really like just because of the creative idea, uh, but also how it was approached in our discussions with Britvic as a brand as well. So as background. So Robinsons had recently rebranded uh, and they wanted to be all about sparking joy and amusement through lively activities. And so they had planned a TV ad featuring a gargling choir. Gargling, uh, Alicia Keys, this girl is on fire. I hope you know the song. Probably best, best if I don't try and sing it. But they had planned this TV activity so this traditional media activity and they wanted to create a splash on social and really supercharge the impact uh, and make the brand kind of gargle famous with particularly Famil as a target audience. And so they came to us and we had a conversation about how we could really supercharge this campaign. And the idea that we put to them was this uh, Guess my gargle uh, campaign. So guess my gargle filter that uh, would be used on social platforms where you have a sip of Robinson's drink and then you gargle a uh, uh, song or a tune and then you invite people to guess what you're trying to gargle. So as you can imagine this was a challenge and a filter that's just right for social platforms like TikTok. Uh, really interesting uh, idea and one that was also right for creators to really get involved and spread the challenge and to spread the generation of content. And so that was the idea and that was the campaign that went out last summer. It was successful. Strong results across the board. But I think the reason for calling out this example was that, uh, I was part of the initial discussions with the client about the idea and understanding the brief that they had. And I like it. And it worked very well because they were very clear on what they wanted to get out of the campaign. They were very clear. They wanted to drive brand perception, they wanted to drive consideration and intent to buy the brand. Uh, they were very clear on the fact that there was, this was part of a multimedia campaign and there was other activity, um, being planned elsewhere. They were very clear on the fact that there was measurement lined up for the other parts of the campaign as well. And so that then helped to steer us towards a creative idea and B, a measurement framework that would address their objectives but also complement what they were doing elsewhere. So we were able to suggest the element human brand lift approach because that could really get to perception of the brand, an understanding of shifts in perception of the brand, a measure of consideration, a measure of intent. With the biometrics part of the methodology, it could get to a, uh, measure of whether you are sparking joy from the creative or happiness, which is what Robinsons were trying to do. That allowed us to tailor our, ah, measurement recommendation towards what they were looking to drive and to prove whether it had been driven. And the ultimate results showed that. So you had just under 80% brand recall. You had nearly 90% who had a favorable opinion of Robinsons having seen the ad. You had about or just over 60% expressing an intent to have a go at gargling that tune and a similar proportion who, uh, expressed an intent to purchase the product having seen the ad. The reason for citing this as a case study is I like the example because it's a very fun example, imagining people gargling a tune with squash. But also it was set up in the right way, in the way that I think has to be the case if you are to develop a concept and develop the measurement around it that gets you the understanding that you need about success.

Speaker A: Well, it does sound like you've got a dream client there with Britvik and, um, Robinson. They clearly knew their objectives, they knew that they were going to measure and what they wanted to measure. So as long as I suppose the budget was there and there are suitable timelines to get it all up and running, it sounds like A dream client. I don't want to go into the ins and outs of your working relationship too much, but I guess they're not a new client. And how did.

Speaker B: You wouldn't.

Speaker A: That hasn't developed overnight. Was that, um, an element of trust that you've had to build up?

Speaker B: We have worked with them for some time. Absolutely. And it's good to be able to lean on the past work and talk about what has worked and what we've learned and talk about previous use of the measurement solutions that we've applied as well. Um, that definitely helps with any client. Talking about the fact we've used this before. This is what we found. So this was where we've shown you value, uh, from the work that we've done and from applying this measurement technique. And that's where it's, I guess, to touch on the previous point where it's really useful to highlight the fact that you've got benchmarks to apply to a given campaign, uh, and you've got the precedent that you can apply. And that's not the case for, uh, all clients. Some of them you need to talk to about this type of a method for the first time. Some of them you have to talk to about, mmm, for example, so media mix modeling for the first time. It's something they might be familiar with but not doing. And so that's why we wanted to invest. Kind of going back to the example I cited earlier with Nielsen. We wanted to invest in an example like that to showcase the kind of insight that you could get. And actually we built on top of that study with the initial study with Nielsen by, uh, a further study with Nielsen where we were looking at, okay, what would happen if you played around with the dials of investment to help clients understand, okay, in that instance, it's very nice to get that 2.4x AH snapshot of ROI. But what would happen if we'd increased our spend in creative marketing and in that instance, Nielsen had guided us, that you could have doubled your spend with creator marketing. And if you had done that, your ROI would have gone up by 20%. That helps to fuel conversations with clients who are, uh, perhaps not experienced in a given technique, but to guide them on, okay, we've done this kind of work before. This is what we've seen. You, of course, need to test and learn what works for your brand. But we've got experience in this space and it's important for us to lean on that as we guide you in the best way.

Speaker A: So it's trust, but it's also relationship building and as you say, being able to lean on the data and past successes. Let's turn to the future. Now, the last couple of questions. What lies over the brow of the hill for Whaler in terms of measurement and analytics?

Speaker B: Ever deeper relationships with brands to really build their understanding of how to drive success from creator marketing. So I've referenced one of our relationships with Gritvit. We work with a number of other brands. We're always talking to them about how do we build on our existing, existing relationship, how do we deepen it with a more deliberate focus on testing and learning? How do we align on hypotheses you want to test? Are there certain creators that you want to explore? Are there certain platforms you want to explore? Certain creative nuances that you want to test? When should the product show up in your creator ad? What's best practice for example? So deeper uh, learning frameworks with clients are definitely um, something that we're pushing for. We want to and will continue to build our uh, body of evidence on benchmarks and best practices when it comes creator marketing, uh, so that we can continue to inform clients on what good looks like and particularly around creative drivers. So where should the product show up? How do you maintain authenticity as a creator? How do you drive intent versus drive awareness or consideration? For example that there's an untapped kind of gold mine of information there. I'm sure that can then steer briefs on how a creator can drive impact from a creator marketing instance. The other two to call out I guess more future focus are uh, I think it's very important to understand the intersection between shorter term cues and shorter term um, impact and measures and longer term um, measures as well. So you've got for example the brand lift example I uh, gave as a shorter term measure of impact. Mmm might potentially be a longer term measure of sales impact. How do you link the two? Can you develop shorter term proxies for more longer term impact for example? And what should that look like? I think that body of evidence is quite prevalent for other media. There's a lot of great work in the industry about kind uh, of the long and the short of it and understanding the kind of the interplay between the two. This is something I'm keen to understand in a lot more detail for creative marketing and there's a real opportunity. The last example I would cite here is I'd be kind of remiss if I didn't mention AI in some form. There's a real opportunity to lean on AI and machine learning to predict performance and to optimize performance earlier for campaigns. So can you code up a given ad that you want to put out and then assess whether it's going to drive purchase intent, for example early, uh, before it goes out, before you invest in amplifying it with paid media? That's I think the way that we're heading and I'm very keen to uh, explore that area to understand whether we can more efficiently help clients in terms of how they optimize their investment.

Speaker A: Different time horizons. I think it's really important. I think that's something that we often forget about and we think about it sort of in terms of a 30 day window or a 60 day window. And I think the different time horizons really interesting benchmarking, of course critical. Uh, we've talked a lot about that and of course how can we talk uh, about anything uh, in 2024 without talking about artificial intelligence? Uh, and again really interesting in predicting uh, outcomes, uh, but how can we harness the best of AI tapping into its efficiencies without throttling effectiveness? Uh, and so I think it works really well here in measurement and evaluation. I'm going to broaden out that question. Uh, again same question though, but expanding out from the company. From an industry point of view, what imperative and what opportunities are there for brands and for our industry ahead in this space?

Speaker B: I mean I see the key opportunity is really to follow more established tactics and robust techniques and to continue learning and iterating what we already know. That drive of continued understanding is absolutely key for brands because uh, the interest is there, the investment is there in creator and influencer marketing. I think it just requires further testing and iteration to really double down on what works and build on those best practices. I think what helps with that uh, is essentially standardization of approaches and techniques where possible. And I'm sure there's a whole other discussion we can have about kind of what counts as standardization. In a perfect world you would want people using what are deemed to be the best possible techniques for measuring success. It's how other media has evolved in terms of the way that they've measured success. There's an obvious focus on the fact that you can ideally standardize audience delivery metrics in the way that other media has. With Bob, for example, standardizing audience measurement for tv. I'm a real fan of the work that uh, is Bar is leading on cross media measurement and their collaboration with the wfa, the broader group, the broader advertiser body and the ANA in the US to try and pull together an Industry led cross media measurement solution that is absolutely needed so you can get a measure of who has seen what, uh, in a way that people can't question in the way that it's been established before for other media, for example. So that sets a standard that then the industry could follow in terms of, okay, that's an impression, uh, that's a reach metric, for example. So I'm a real fan of that kind of initiative. What's interesting and what we're fascinating to see going forward is that the broader ambition for the ISBAR and the broader WFA work is audience measurement, but also potentially outcomes measurement as well. It begs the question, can you standardize outcome measurement? I know people will have varying opinions about kind of how to measure the effectiveness of a given campaign. Is it attention? Is it emotional engagement, is it sales, is it done through attribution or mmm, for example, or any manner of other techniques. Effectiveness feels like the kind of thing that is more subjective and it is for other media as well. So will we reach a point where the industry develops a standard for an effective ad? I, uh, think this a fascinating conversation. It'd be really interesting to see how it plays out. But I think this whole area comes about because the industry has come together and said we need this, we need standardization of measurement more broadly for digital and other media. This collaboration has generated this project, uh, Origin and kind of a similar incarnation in the US that collaboration is key for the digital industry, but for Influencer and creator marketing as well, I'm really keen to see, see where that goes. There's a real opportunity in that area to standardize what we're doing and to develop best practice for people to follow. And I say I really enjoy these kind of conversations, like the industry conversation there, but the one you and I are having now because it really sparks discussion about the key topics that we should be diving into. And I'm really keen to talk about this with anyone who wants to because we should be challenging ourselves. We should be having these debates like is this thing better than that thing? If not, why is this thing viable? If not, then why? That's how we move together as a broader industry towards something that truly helps the advertisers that are looking to invest.

Speaker A: Thanks, Alex. You mentioned ISPA and Origin and a lot of time and effort and money has been poured into that. But I think they're inching towards great results there. Uh, one of my other hats is as the Director General of the Influencer marketing trade body and Whaler is a founding member of the IA so these are the sorts of conversations that increasingly we're having within our uh, trade body in the uk. Emma Harman of course, is the co chair of the IMTB this year, uh, alongside Ollie Lewis from the fifth. So measurement and valuation analytics, uh, hugely important to us. Something that we need to get, uh, get more involved in. Uh, and in terms of ispa, uh, the IMTB is a co owner of the Influencer Marketing co of conduct alongside ISBA as well. So they're a great ally to us. Um, Alex, we've whizzed through these questions. Where can listeners turn to for more information about you and about Whaler?

Speaker B: Either reach out to me directly via LinkedIn. Always happy to chat about anything to do with the measurement space. Uh, but our Whaler website, Whaler.com has a lot of information about what we do as a company and about some of the measurement work that I've referenced today. Uh, and also Whaler is on all of the social platforms. So our LinkedIn page has a lot of uh, activity and updates about the work that's being done. So definitely search for uh, ailer on LinkedIn. There's more information there.

Speaker A: Well, I will be sure to include those links in the show notes accompanying this podcast episode along with a link to that white paper that you referenced. Some of the stats, uh, on ROI creators measure up analyzing their impact on results. Just Google the Influencer Marketing Lab for further details. Alex north, head of media measurement and analytics across EMEA at creator company Wailer. Thank you so much for your time and all your thoughts today.

Speaker B: Thank you, Scott.

Speaker A: Thank you for listening to the Influencer Marketing Lab with me, Scott Guthrie. My podcast is in a paid sponsorship with T Tagger by Sprout Social. Please subscribe on Apple, uh, Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. And for more information, visit influencer marketinglab.com Sign up to the weekly newsletter at www.creatorbriefing.com and if you want to see how Tagger by Sprout Social can work for you, go to tagger, uh, mo media.com request.