Google may finally be bringing some order to the messy world of influencer marketing thanks to a forgotten acquisition

Jif paid for this
YouTube video
YouTube

• Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai last week talked up
  FameBit — an under-the-radar influencer platform the
  company purchased in 2016.
• FameBit is now helping broker deals between YouTube
  talent and brands while taking a 10% cut of the
  deals.
• This has the potential of bringing order to the
  highly fragmented influencer marketing sector.
• It also put Google in an atypical role of servicing
  creative campaigns, something it’s historically been happy
  to cede to third parties.

Google is looking to bring some order to the chaos that is
influencer marketing.

Specifically, YouTube,
through its 2016 acquisition of the influencer-centric firm
Famebit, is connecting YouTube creators with brands, and
facilitating the creation of sponsored videos. The unit got a
rare brush with fame last week — a shoutout on Google’s
otherwise low key earnings call.

“Half of the creators that used FameBit in the first three
months of 2018, doubled their YouTube revenue,” said CEO
Sundar Pichai during
the call.

YouTube has historically shied away from this labor
intensive, service-oriented aspect of the business, leaving
that to multi-channel networks like Fullscreen or Maker
Studios (which eventually sold to Disney), talent rep firms
and a host of ad agencies, PR shops, and
influencer database startups.

But in the past few months, via FameBit, Google has
increasingly been playing matchmaker with brands and YouTube
talent. And unlike in the past, it’s getting a cut of branded
content cash, which previously went straight into
creators pockets.

Among the many questions going forward: Is Google getting
more serious about brokering YouTube ad deals good or bad for
other players in the space?

FameBit connects YouTubers with brands — and makes Google
money

The idea behind FameBit is to create a digital marketplace
that aspires to make influencer brand deals as ‘programmatic’
as possible.

Veteran YouTube sales executive Beau Avril, who’s FameBit’s
global head of business operations, said that brands can log
into a self-serve digital interface, post an opportunity for
a sponsorship, and quickly connect with thousands of creators
if they are interested.

Google takes a 10% cut of any deals that result. The company
acts as facilitator, stewarding the execution of branded
videos. But YouTube leaves the production to the creators.

The company says that in the first quarter of this year,
90% of FameBit campaigns drove 20 times the usual search
queries for those advertisers in the four hours before or
after viewers watched the brand funded creator videos. 

Famebit’s
pricing
FameBit

“Brands like the ‘self-service’ element to the platform,”
said Benjamin Arnold, managing director at the agency We
are Social.  “This is a really attractive selling point
for them.”

YouTube’s ad sales team has been out selling FameBit deals as
part of large ad packages. FameBit also had a big presence at
the web video industry/fan event VidCon in June.

In its pitches to advertisers, YouTube is touting its unique
ability to measure the impact of marketer-funded YouTube
videos on everything from brand perception to search traffic
on Google.com.

“One of the most exciting pieces is the measurement side,”
said Avril. “We can we show brands what happens in
search when creators talk about their products.”

“The offering is pretty soup to nuts.”

Recent examples of FameBit-driven deals include a series of
influencer-produced videos for Canon,
as well as the peanut butter brand Jif.

Gemma
Stafford, who runs the four year old Bigger Bolder Baking
channel, has previously worked with advertisers through multi
channel networks (MCNs) and directly. She’s recently inked
several brand partnerships using FameBit, including a video
for the Google Home mini device, as well as a clip centered
on Oatmeal cookies sponsored by Keurig.

“The fact that they align themselves with quality brands
makes us want to work with them,” said Stafford.

Influencer marketing is still messy, and has taken a beating
recently

There are umpteen ways that marketers can connect with
digital creators. For a while, the YouTube ecosystem was
dominated by MCNs like Maker Studios and Fullscreen.

More recently, there have been hundreds of influencer
networks and tech firms promising deep databases of talent
and
close-to-automated deals. Not to mention ad agencies, PR
firms, and brands themselves all looking to execute
influencer initiatives.

“There are still eight ways to make these deals,” said Eric
Johnson, founder and president of the digital ad agency
Ignited.

Amidst that fragmentation influencer marketing has
taken a beating for not only being tough to measure, but

plagued by creators trying to inflate their numbers

In fact, Unilever’s
chief marketing officer Keith Weed recently pledged to no
longer work with any influencers who pay to boost their
follower counts.

“The whole industry is so messed up,” said one digital media
insider. So maybe Google can fix it?

Google can theoretically bring scale, organization and
credibility to influencer deals

Ironically, all the recent brand safety snafus in digital
media, and on YouTube in particular, may help FameBit. Huh?

Well, as the thinking goes, why work with a random third
party that may have partial data and indirect relationships
with talent, over a company like FameBit that is directly
plugged into YouTube’s tech, and presumably knows which
influencers are both prominent and safe?

In other words, FameBit comes across as being more legit,
since it’s part of Google.

“It’s really smart,” said Nick Cicero, founder of the social
analytics firm Delmondo. Finding the right influencers to
work with “is still the biggest problem for brands.”

So what happens to other players?

Whenever Google enters a market in a serious way, some see it
as a sign of validation, and others worry that their business
is about to be trampled.

Some influencer talent rep firms said that FameBit had helped
steer deals their way. But they often wonder, are they
helping, or getting in the way?

“There is a disintermediation, and consolidation coming to
this market, no question” said Ryan Detert, CEO of the
influencer tech firm Influential.

That doesn’t mean that Google necessarily takes it all. For
one, FameBit primarily works with YouTube, and brands want
influencers on Instagram, Snap, etc.

“It’s still too early to say the market has been radically
upended by Google,” said Mike Dossett, VP /Associate
Director, Digital Strategy at the ad agency RPA. “But there’s
no question that, as a whole, the space itself is finally
arriving at a long overdue turning point.”

Dossett said that for influencer brand deals, pricing and
measurement tend to be all over the places, and there’s
an “overabundance of middlemen.”

“Google’s sheer market-shaping power and their stewardship of
one of the leading creator environments has the potential to
accelerate the long-awaited maturation of the influencer
space,” he said.

Yeah, but is this really worth Google’s time?

Several digital insiders scratched their heads when Google
bought FameBit. After all, the search giant is known for
using data and tech to zap perfectly targeted ads to people
on the web.

Making branded content videos, making clients happy, getting
creative right — that’s not typically the domain of a neutral
tech platform. It’s ad agency, production company type work.

And not only can branded content shows be time consuming,
some wonder whether the payoff is worth it. Is 10% of a
handful of six figure ad deals going to move the needle for
YouTube?

“No matter how you look at it, these deals are hard to
scale and have lower margins,” said Gabe Gordon,
co-founder and managing partner of Reach Agency, which
specializes in branded video content.

Digital creator Sam Tsui said he’s worked with brands every
which way on YouTube — and recently produced a video for NBC
to promote “The Voice” that was brokered through FameBit.

“There was nothing automated about it,” he said. “It felt
like other deals I’ve been a part of. There were drafts,
approvals, etc.”

Still Tsui raved about the experience. “YouTube’s been
really good about engaging and lifting up their creators. So
it’s exciting to know that a player like FameBit has this
sort of backing from and the association with YouTube.”

Google loves to tout when they are helping talent on their
platform