Once considered a complement to digital marketing portfolios, influencer marketing has morphed from a nice-to-have into a must-have. At inception, influencer marketing success relied entirely on vanity metrics. Big brands would reach out to influencers (primarily celebrities at the time), hand over big money, and hope to see their needle move — a model akin to yesterday’s media buy. Similar to old-school media buys, much of the structure came directly from advertisers. Brands dictated exactly what and when influencers posted and how they were compensated.
