TikTok, Snap offer influencer agencies access to data and creators to gain competitive advantage

Even with Google recently deciding to shift plans with the third-party cookie deprecation, agencies plan to forge ahead with first-party data practices — making these social media alliances perhaps even more valuable going forward.

Influencer agency HireInfluence, has postured its value on TikTok, inking a new partnership with the platform for a dedicated TikTok agency representative, customized data pulls and premium ad placements and measurements, said Chris Jacks, director of growth strategy at HireInfluence. TikTok approached the agency about two years ago looking for feedback, Jacks said, declining to give more information and citing an NDA.

TikTok’s first-party data, and matching that to creator insights from TikTok, helps ensure its accuracy and helps to build confidence on the brand side to work with those creators again. “The more accurately we can portray the value of creators, I think the more enthusiastic a brand is to work with them again or develop a long-term partnership,” Jacks told Digiday. 

HireInfluence has biweekly meetings with its TikTok rep to share tactics. Asked whether there is concern over a potential ban or sale of TikTok, Jacks said the agency is not overly concerned since influencer marketing campaigns work with a different time frame, often anywhere from one month to one year. Jacks also said TikTok has reassured them “that everything is going to be fine” and seems “transparent” about updates in their conversations.

“We’re not thinking about a five-, 10-year digital strategy,” Jacks said. “That allows us to just think about, OK, what impact can we generate in the more immediate term — compared to a bigger company or someone that’s responsible for running their social platforms and might have to take a multi-year approach.”

A growing trend

HireInfluence is not alone in building closer relations with social networks. In June, Sprout Social partnered with Snap to access profiles, insights and target audiences through its influencer platform Tagger. Influencer marketing platform CreatorIQ in May also inked a partnership with Snap to expand its creator discovery capabilities, making it easier for marketers to manage and measure engagement on creators programs. CreatorIQ works with some 1,200 global advertisers, from Logitech to Unilever.

CreatorIQ’s integration with Snap comes after seeing a 140% year-over-year increase in its Snap campaigns in 2023. With this deal, CreatorIQ said it will be able to get optimized creator activations and measurement, such as targeting more audience engagement and brand recall. Previously, Snap did not offer API access — so CreatorIQ had to manually work with data, explained Tim Sovay, chief partnerships officer at CreatorIQ.

“[It] severely limits scalability and the ability to optimize,” Sovay said. “Our customers want access to every social media platform where creators exist at scale.”

Sovay did not specify whether Snap approached it first, or the other way around — but added that more than 80% of creator marketing campaigns are “multi-platform in nature” and CreatorIQ “works closely with all major social platforms via direct API access.” Sovay noted that Snap has “highly-valuable younger demographics.”

It’s a win-win for Snap and the social apps too, as it can lure more influencers onboard and, with that, their followings, to the platform. Snap has been trying push its content creator strategy after introducing its TikTok-like short videos, Spotlight, in 2020. The number of creators submitting to Spotlight has grown by more than 20%, according to Jim Shepherd, director of content and global creator partnerships at Snap, without providing exact figures.

“It’s exciting to see how much our community loves their [creator] content,” Shepherd said.

CreatorIQ said it has API partnerships with TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Twitch. Jacks at HireInfluence also said the agency works with other platforms, including YouTube and Reddit, and sees this relationship cultivation continuing as the agency looks to more reporting resources from them.

While Jacks said he is eager to collaborate more closely with Meta apps, given higher marketer spending on Instagram and Facebook, there is no “bias” even as the agency develops special relationships like this one with TikTok.

“There are different value propositions offered by different platforms — they don’t need to exist in their own silos,” Jacks said. “We might get an Instagram Reel from a creator, but know that for a specific objective, there’s a TikTok ad format that we want to run. So we get that secondary asset, and we can run paid on TikTok.”