Why influencers are not programmatic

Influence relationship management and marketing is one of my favorite topics to discuss with clients, and it’s a topic I’ve addressed before. Long before influencer marketing became an industry buzzword, consumers were reacting positively to branded messages from experts and key opinion leaders. But the rise of social media has enabled brands and agencies to ramp up what was already happening and tap celebrities, persons of note and creators to help them reach broader (or new) audiences. With this has come the emergence of helpful tools that identify relevant influencers across the numerous social channels. However, there is no unifying or automated platform to manage all the sponsored and organic influencer content across the various social platforms and formats. And as influencer marketing becomes a larger and more important piece of a marketer’s budget, the need for standardization is growing. Recently, ROI Influencer Media (a leading influencer aggregator) announced partnerships with several programmatic buying platforms, including DoubleClick Ad Exchange, PubMatic, Rubicon Project and OpenX. This is the first real attempt at standardizing and modernizing influencer marketing to include large-scale ad buying, offering up bundles of signed influencers.