Which platforms are influencers paid to make content on the most often?
This year, the business is on track to make $20 million in deals. What sort of money does your company make?įour years ago, Viral Nation was doing about $1.2 million annually, and last year we grew to $4.5 million. In terms of brands, we work with hundreds, like Crayola, Anheuser-Busch, Spin Master,, Wish, Jet.com, Wrigley, Mars, Chinese tech giants Baidu and Tencent, which is our biggest client by a long shot. We work with personalities like the gamer SSSNIPERWOLF, IISuperwomanII, Bart Baker, Scotty Sire, Lewis Hilsenteger, Anish Bhatt. Who are the clients and influencers you work with? Check out the video to see what's inside! #ad So told me I was going to a photoshoot and when I got there, THIS was waiting for me! My very own Fortnite supply drop. Today, Viral Nation has relationships with 10,000 influencers, and is the biggest influencer agency in the space. We made ourselves be the ones that own the space of the influencers, whereas the different companies that wanted to work with brands have basically turned into our salesmen. The reason we were successful is because we reached out to influencers, instead of going brand-side. There are tons of influencer agencies out there. Within our first year, we signed about $500,000 in endorsement deals for influencers, and pretty soon, we had signed 700 influencers. We signed a deal with him and Post cereal, and two weeks later, one client turned into 16.
Our first client outside of the hockey space was a Vine star named Ray Ligaya, who actually works for us now. We then started working with a few hockey players to build their social media presence and get them money off of their social. We spent a week studying platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Vine, and came up with a business model. I noticed that big brands like Under Armour were slipping social media requirements into contracts, but hockey players weren’t getting anything extra because no one really understood its value. About six years ago, one of our friends was working as an agent for an NHL player, and he let me work on a few endorsement deals for his client. I also used to be a hockey player and had a lot of friends who play in the NHL. We had previously been running a liquidation business where we’d buy returned items from major retailers and sell them to liquidators, so we had brand connections. Me and my co-founder, Mathew Micheli, met in high school in Toronto and started Viral Nation in 2012. How did you start out in the influencer space? This interview has been edited and condensed. I grabbed breakfast with Gagliese in New York City a few weeks ago to talk about the current state of the influencer industry. By pairing them with major brands, Gagliese and his team of 50 take in millions in revenue through what you like, watch, and buy. Viral Nation works with some influencers you probably know (like PewDiePie, one of the most followed people on YouTube), and plenty of others you likely haven’t heard of. One person in this crowded and often cutthroat space is Joe Gagliese, one of the co-founders of Viral Nation, an influencer agency that boasts the ability to “create the most viral, captivating and ROI-focused social media influencer campaigns for global brands.” The industry has evolved significantly over the years, whether it was from weathering the storm of new Federal Trade Commission requirements that influencers must now explicitly say when they’re being paid, or the rise of buying fake followers. The influencer space, which once consisted of semi-famous bloggers making some extra cash on the side, has turned into a bona fide career path. They connect with people more deeply than a page in a magazine and can therefore sway potential customers. Fashion bloggers and gym instructors, they believe, are the next step in advertising. Open Instagram and scroll, and you likely can’t go more than a few seconds without seeing someone you follow promoting a brand, whether it’s a celebrity, a wannabe celebrity, or that random girl you went to college with who’s somehow managed to become a famous fashion blogger.Īccording to the influencer management platform Traackr, 72 percent of major brands say they are dedicating a sizable portion of their marketing budgets to influencers - people with a strong relationship to an audience who can heavily sway decisions like purchasing habits.