Whether an influencer campaign succeeds or fails often comes down to creator selection \u2013 and increasingly that\u2019s a job being handled by AI.<\/p>\n
Dentsu, for example, has been using an AI agent system dubbed \u201cCreator & Trends Studio\u201d\u00a0(CATS), which aids influencer selection decisions.<\/p>\n
In use since January, the tool is built around an API deal with Meta, and suggests creators based on typical factors like subject matter and profile, as well as whether they\u2019re participating in a given social media trend.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Shenda Loughnane, global brand president at Dentsu X, told Digiday the\u00a0idea is to turn brands\u2019 ability to\u00a0\u201ctap into culture\u201d via influencers\u00a0into a repeatable system.<\/p>\n
For Dentsu, CATS is encoded at the heart of a \u201cplaybook\u201d for creator marketing it\u2019s recently established across its client roster that emphasizes the cultural capital held by influencers \u2013 and the use of paid spend across Meta\u2019s Partnership and Reels Trending ad formats to create measurable impacts.<\/p>\n
Skincare brands Galderma and Elizabeth Arden are among the clients currently using the approach; in the case of the latter, the agency observed\u00a0a 14.3% increase in unaided ad recall among customers and a 41% rise in sales conversions from partnership ads.<\/p>\n
\u201cBrands really need to think hard about how they cut through the \u2018sea of same\u2019, and how they really try and win in an algorithmic environment,\u201d said\u00a0Loughnane.<\/p>\n
Dentsu is far from the only agency relying on AI tools for creator discovery. Tech has become a key differentiator among indie and holdco creator businesses<\/a>.<\/p>\n Independent influencer agency Later uses an AI system that matches campaign briefs with candidate influencers and models potential performance of content on social media based on historic engagement data.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a much richer picture that gives me confidence that I\u2019m going to get a high ROAS on my campaign,\u201d said Scott Sutton, CEO of Later. He told Digiday the agency\u2019s teams have been using AI tools for creator discovery for six months.<\/p>\n These applications of AI follow earlier tech interventions in the creator marketing workflow. First, marketers and agencies such as Goat, Obviously, Viral Nation and Influencer tackled campaign brief generation, and later moved to use AI tools to vet the creators they considered working with<\/a>.<\/p>\n Now that discovery and selection tools have entered the picture, much of the modern creator marketing campaign process is becoming automated.<\/p>\n For Later\u2019s Sutton, it\u2019s a necessary response to a changing market. Brands now work with so many creators as they bid to beat social algorithms that manual campaign organization is unfeasible.<\/p>\n \u201cMore and more brands want to work with more creators,\u201d he said. \u201cThe mechanics of operating creative programs in a highly effective way require you to use more influencers \u2013 generally, smaller to mid size influencers \u2013 in a more targeted way.\u201d<\/p>\n Walmart, for example, now deploys \u201chundreds of thousands\u201d of creators, according to\u00a0Sarah Henry, the retail giant\u2019s vp, head of content, influencer and commerce. It\u2019s not picking influencers based on their follower count, Henry said during a speech last week at the ANA\u2019s 2026 Media Conference, but rather on engagement metrics.<\/p>\n Using such a lens at scale wouldn\u2019t be possible \u201cwithout breaking our team, and the client,\u201d said\u00a0Kevin Blazaitis, president at Creo.\u00a0\u201cI would say we\u2019re probably working with 30 or 40% more influencers on average per campaign.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n