@rrhoover I agree completely when a user is willing to sacrifice the integrity of their social capitol (to a degree) then it becomes more of a manufactured storytelling experience instead of something natural/organic feeling. This isn't favorable for the brand or the publisher.
Part of what we're building is more than just a self-serve platform to connect brands with highly-engaged online influencers. Exposely is building intelligence around your audience so that we can do anonymous user profiling, grouping users by buckets (interests, etc) and really help online influencers understand what, when and why (or why not) to share specific content to their audience. This can apply to both branded and non-branded content of course.
So far we haven't run into issues with our influencer network's reach decreasing due to sponsored posts, if anything we've seen steady growth in users, revenue and brand campaigns.
I generally have an aversion to promoted tweets/social posts. It feels like it cheapens the relationship between the publisher (the person posting the ad) and their audience. That said, I also believe there's nothing wrong with monetizing via social channels just companies do within their own products. I'm conflicted. :) In either case, the promotion needs to be obvious.
@nickyads - have you used this? I'm curious how lucrative this is for someone like @snoopdogg.
I completely agree with your sentiment @rrhoover. The history of paid social has been a bit foggy however their is not denying that huge networks exist within these platforms and they are worth tapping into. I recently experimented with this product and believe that the founder is really forward thinking.
This type of business is more advantageous niche content creators and this product is taking a different approach.
Regarding @snoopdogg, I did experiment early on with networks like Adly and for awhile they were extremely profitably. However it quickly became clear to the brands that it was more cost effective to go directly to the artist in order to create a more robust campaign.
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