AI’s Impact on the Creator Economy w/ Alexander Frolov (HypeAuditor)

0:00if somebody thinks about influencer marketing and start doing something there, keep trying, the world is changing and you want to be a part of these changes.

0:14hey alex welcome to the show how are you fine fine thank you very much uh thank you for having me here today absolutely today we talk about a few interesting things you know we're gonna go through roi you know performance metrics you know ai of course because everyone is talking about ai the creative economy these days it's not possible to buy a one-on-one recession about that we're going to look into do's and don'ts then we're going to also finish you know with also something that we talked about in the past that is like you know athletes and then how they're like doing these days but so you know there is a lot to jump on in today but before we get started usually ask like just you know one two minutes to introduce yourself but we do it in a way that is called a map basically it's divided in three main sections the mission what do you achieve with your work achievements anything that you're very proud of you know any notable milestone in your career or life.

1:07The last one is the purpose. So why do you do what you do? So basically start with the mission. I think I do not have like short slogan version because what we have on the website is more kind of UBP for our customers. But I generally very like creator economy and where it leads the world because the products become more like diversified, more people oriented. And I actually want to make these movements kind of most like transparent, honest, effective. And it's kind of our mission. We start with the transparency and trying to make React economy better, I would say. About our achievements and my personal achievements, I would say the hypothesis so far is my greatest achievement because I was managed to build truly international company.

2:14We operate in many countries, not only the US, but also European countries, Latin America, Asian countries. And that's fascinating to work and build worldwide companies, work with the peoples around the world. And our reputation is also one of our achievements. We have hundreds and thousands publications with our data in different media sources, including Biggest One, Forbes, Business Insider, PR Week, Ed Week, TechCrunch, a lot of them. And that's also kind of cool to see representation of your work on the global scale. And Orpheus, it's probably the hardest thing. But for me, like purpose is kind of trying to do some meaningful impact because every businessman is either trying to build business, thinking about money.

3:22But for me, it's also very important to do something impactful in a good way when I can be proud when I tell about my work for my kids and I can have some nice story for them. So this is kind of my way of measurement. As the purpose, I want to bring something that I can be proud of to humility. Amazing. And since, you know, you already mentioned, like, of course, you know, in a funny way about measurement, but let's talk about that. Right. Because, you know, both of us have been in the industry for a long time. So we do remember, right, the times that at the beginning it was about awareness only.

4:04There were no tracking in place. It was so cloudy, so difficult. Right. And it was just about, hey, I want to go on social media. Let's try this influencer marketing stuff. Then a few years ago, right, we moved from only brand awareness to more like, you know, performance metrics and so on. And then in the past couple of years, the majority of CMOs, the head of marketing out there, they've been like, OK, I want to do this, but what is going to be the ROI of the campaign? So tell me a bit more, how do you see that? What is the best way to calculate ROI in influencer marketing these days? Have you identified some formulas or frameworks that any type of companies out there, micro, macro, big companies in different industries can actually use that to really understand, was this influencer marketing campaign successful for me or not?

4:48That's generally a quite big topic because every company is thinking about influencer marketing. It's so white, but not every company succeeded in influencer marketing. That's also true. And what we see, the best way to return your investments is for the company that finds a way to complex use of influencer marketing. If you're trying to just put the money or the campaign with the direct tracking and compare it to the paid ads, in the most ways, it's a pretty bad end because it's not the way how the influencer marketing built. But we see a lot of success for the companies who find the complex way.

5:44A huge market is e-coloners who make influencer marketing campaigns because they can use influencer marketing in so many ways. They can get like first reviewers, I would say, of their stuff. They can get the content they can use on their website. They can get the content they can use in their advertisement and get better conversion. Also, they have these direct users they get from the promotion with influencers. So they get kind of complex effects. You get something as a direct ROI trackable through link. You get something that you save on the producing content. You get some CTR increase and get better return on your ads and so on, so on.

6:39And they kind of build a good complex system that drives business forward. And while others like complaining that nothing works, just comparing direct links, traffic, those companies just go forward ahead their competitors because they found their way. And e-commerce niche is not the only one. But this is very like good example of how the products could be used in a good way through influencer marketing to return back on investment. So there is kind of will be no unified formula in this. You need to find where you can like amplify effectiveness of your business with some parts of influencer marketing.

7:29but you can build your own like unique formula save here improve here like get content to website here like get sales through the micro influencers here and overall it will give you a great boost for your business but unfortunately it's a little bit more complex when it's just giving a formula that's why we're speaking so much about it because people need some time to understand this stuff absolutely yeah there is not you know one size fits all right the type of situation when it comes to that there are maybe some sort of like you know again formulas and and and framework that it can go back just as a you know a sort of base like you know foundations but of course, it has to be customized and tailored right on the industry that you're in and so on.

8:27But I like when you say that, and we say this all the time also, people like, you know, again, think of influencer marketing as, you know, pay to play action where I put$1 in and this is what I'm going to get the same day. But as you said also before, it's not like that because you get much more, right? From that campaign, it's not just about the content. You got the content, you get all the discovery, all the audience, you get feedback, real-time comments, right? If you pay X, you can get media rights. Those media rights, you can put them on your website, right? Those videos, you can boost certain videos, right?

9:00That have that top UGC style, right? So there's so much more, right? And I think that, yeah, I agree. Like up until the client and the brand doesn't understand all the value that it gets in an influencer marketing campaign, and they only look at, I put$1 in, I want to get$7 out today. That is usually what I read around on the internet. It's like, okay, we might not be on the same page on that yet. Yeah, there's many expectations like a magic wand or something like this, but unfortunately, nothing in the marketing in any channel works like a magic wand. You still need to work. Yes, and what I say all the time is that if a marketer said the word guaranteed, it's not a marketer.

9:41That's usually what I say. We can do our best, but if you guarantee anything in marketing, there is something a bit sketchy for me, to be honest. In speaking about ROI, there is also an interesting part that it's not only marketing. To be honest, speaking about influencer marketing, because it brings so much feedback, as you said, about the product. And you need to understand to succeed in influencer marketing. You need to have good products that will fit the audience you targeted. They need to like it. They need to have a good impression about it. It's impossible to sell average products for influencer marketing users.

10:25Just get a lot of feedback that the product is kind of average. That's all. Hello! Is your brand ready to amplify its reach? Well, the Influencer Marketing Factory is here to do just that. We are a global influencer marketing agency helping brands ignite their growth. From influencer identification to campaign strategy, handling legalities and agreements to managing shipping and logistics, we have it all covered. We work with hundreds of brands across different verticals from Fortune 500 companies to DTC brands. And we don't just stop there. With detailed ROI analysis, we help brands like yours measure success transforming impressions into actionable conversions.

11:05You can find us at theinfluencermarketingfactory.com or just search the Influencer Marketing Factory on Google. Absolutely. And that is actually also something good, right? Because many brands get in with a new product, a new service. They think that it's going to be a blast and everyone is going to love it. And then actually, thanks to influencer marketing and thanks to, you know, like, again, kind of like unhinged type of comments from people, they can actually see, do people love this? Do people hate it? What would it change, right? I said this like a dozen times, but the comment section is basically your focus group, right?

11:37That you can actually learn from, right? So that is also part, in my opinion, of the ROI. It's not just about, again, as you said, marketing. It's also sales cycles. It is, you know, there is so much, right, going on on there. And from ROI, again, let's move to, again, the topic that everyone is talking about, of course. You know, it's a buzzword, AI. So let's go away from the buzzword of AI, right? From the generic things there. Let's go really a bit more into actual items. Let's talk about also like maybe some do's and don'ts, right, of AI in the creator economy. Because, right, there are people using, like creators saying, for instance, using AI as a support.

12:15There are others that have been completely replaced, right? We've been seeing a lot of AI avatars that are given a prompt and they can actually recreate thousands of videos, right? And they are put on social media. So let's start with that. But like in your opinion, based on what you've been seeing, right, on social media these days, some do's and don'ts of the creator economy that you would recommend to both creators and also maybe companies that are looking into AI for influencer marketing. Sure, that is a lot of helpful stuff that you can do with AI, but also a lot of great thing. We will touch both.

12:50Speaking about helpful stuff, actually, it helps a lot with like connecting, basically. It's what products like Hypotheter do, it's what can be automated in other ways. It's helping to find the right brands and the right influencers. Because previously, without AI having some narrow niche, you'll spend a lot of time trying to find the right influencers. and usually only those who are in the very top get a lot of brand attention, get a lot of companies who want to give them money, but all the rest, starting from the middle and lower, get nothing. But sometimes there is a much better pick with small influencers, especially when you have a narrow niche, and AI helping to leverage this to the next level, save time with the companies finding these influencers.

13:50Next thing to do that is great is a simplified way of communication. It's just from the start, but I imagine this like in the two, three years, like there will be assistant on one side, assistant on the other side. They will just communicate. Fine. Do they have like dots to connect? and if there are meaningful conversations going on, then real people talk. And we will save all the time scrolling through these unended emails. There's a very generic anyway. Does AI write them or human write them? It's just an unending plenial theme. So this assistance is very helpful. You already understand, okay, this is a good brand for me.

14:49This is a good influencer for me. We mentioned somehow on how much it could cost. Do I promote these type products or not? This saves a lot of time. And also one of the already working ways to use AI is to boost your creative. It is already so good in it, even like the chat GPT from the box, you can say to it, like work for me like influencer marketing expert and give me ideas about my product, about which influencers I need. And same stuff for the influencers. They can ask what ideas I can bring on, with whom I can work. It already works wonderful, giving you this field of ideas. And about don'ts.

15:43What actually feels creepy and don't recommend it to do. Fully generic stuff. Nowadays, it looks like another way to spam. when you scroll on TikTok and get this fully automated script, it's something feels just a bunch of trash adding to the internet, nothing more. And no authenticity. They are like virtual influencers, which are created by humans, which gave personality or something like this, like Lil Miquela or other virtual influencers. This stuff is cool. This is totally different. This feels authentic. This feels like real influencers. But all this generic stuff with the features like reading some text, even when they start to read it good, it still, there is like no authenticity.

16:39And you have understanding that there are just people trying to make some fast money, just uploading the tons of this generic stuff and it's actually platform fighting with it, I think. But in average, it makes your experience with the social networks worse, I would say, at the moment. So I wouldn't recommend to replace human authenticity with some fully generated stuff. and also expect from AI to make decisions for you. We are also not in this stage. Even if you ask about idea, campaigns, even if you can analyze something, give advices, give good ideas, give you basically food for your brain, but you still need to use your brain.

17:40If you will just follow what AI said, it would be still a very creepy hallucinating journey. So use it as a field of ideas, but not as instruction of what to do. Yeah, especially since there are still AI hallucinating, right? and coming up with completely fabricated things. And, you know, I've been seeing on the news people following like medical advice from Chagipity and going to the hospital, right? Because they follow by like, you know, again, AI as it was a doctor and look at what happened there. So yes, like I would not also recommend to like, again, it's a great support, right? But as you said, you need your brain, you need your style.

18:33while also like AI as of now, it's only able to basically refine and analyze things based on data that already exists out there. So the creativity part is missing, right? The AI as of now cannot create anything new. Maybe the idea to you can be new if you never heard about it, but it means that it was in a data set of billions and billions of items out there. But it cannot, as of now, at least come out with anything that is totally new, right? So if you are working in marketing and creative, you want your brain as a human being, I mean, like, okay, this is that genius, right, that comes totally to human right now.

19:07So that's also usually what I recommend, right? To use that as a support, but if you want to make a difference in the marketing, you know, scene has to come from you. Yeah, yeah, for sure. It can be a food for your brain to kind of make a way for some ideas. But as I say, you can't just follow. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so, you know, like if AI, right, as we said, it's all about, not all about, right, but there are certain profiles, right, that are completely agenerated. It's a bit difficult to trust them, right? Are they real? Are they not real? I can feel there is like this sort of, again, gap between me and them because I can see they're not real there, right?

19:49The opposite of it, it's still real people. And one of the ones that have been like, you know, growing a lot in terms of interest are athletes, right? We talk about it in other episodes. We even recently did a blog post about athletes as influencers. So first of all, why do you think that now all the NIL discussions is getting to almost the next level? And secondly, do you have any either case studies or data from App Auditor that maybe you can tell us? Why now? Athletes have been there for ages, but why all in the past few years there's been this influx and interest in that? I think that it's some moment in the time that was right.

20:32The interest was always there. But I think there are like several things happen. First, like the legal. When they get allowed to get all these paid contracts, all the stuff, and they still continue to be like professional. So athletes, it's a very important point. Also, like general outcome when everybody wants to be an influencer, even if you're an athlete, even if you're like some kind of musician, actor. Anyway, you still want to be an influencer because like social networks give you like so much and give you additional like brand contracts. They give you additional exposure, personality, and so on, and so on.

21:27And I think every young people in our age are thinking about how to develop their social networks, and they have everything, like Instagram, TikTok, all the stuff. And why the athletes specifically is so hot topic? I think because the connection with the athletes is so much better than the other celebrities, like from the hypothetical data. For example, we compare them for lifestyle, for example, in sorts of the same size. And the engagement rate of young athletes was almost 50 % higher in average. Yeah, so there is their audience is much more engaged because they're not just some guy, girl, which have a cool lifestyle and I like what shall be having breakfast.

22:30but it's kind of fun model when I have like some guy who are like my heart with him I watch every game it's a little bit different they have really like strong following their community and brands feel it and they see this opportunity they also want to reach young audiences who are following these people because it's their future customers, especially big companies. But still at this level, it's much more affordable. So the market is explored first year when it was allowed to make these brand contracts. This year alone, green around 900 million for this young athletes, but there is like very big difference.

23:25five and especially top one percent make a lot of money and there is a like a big tail who are doing not so well so it's also not like everyone having like huge success as in every niche they're like even from the young athletes they're like big celebrities and somebody who is doing average but especially for the like food brands for like sport brands something like this like it's a very good opportunity to find a connection with the young audience and you have like a bonus stake on here if you make long term contract and a guy or girl becomes like superstar you get Yeah, additional bonuses is kind of like winning on your stake.

24:22So that's true. Yeah, yeah. It's a hit or miss, right? Like in that situation. But if you hit it well, like, you know, there have been plenty of cases where someone was just counted maybe, you know, and I think that then went on the Olympics or national teams and they signed a contract maybe with a way lower prices, right? Because that person was not that known. And then, boom, they become like one of the top players. and maybe for another year or two years or three years, right? You do have a contract with them and they become your ambassador for a fraction of a price, right? That you might have paid if only, right?

24:56You waited a bit more. So, and I also agree when you say that, you know, athletes work well on several different industries and verticals, right? You can have food and bath, of course, but also beauty product, right? You have like, there is so much, right? Because an athlete, you know, they have a healthy lifestyle And there are so many things like sneakers that you have to try on, things for your body, mental health, right? Like there is so much, right, that you can actually use that. So pretty, pretty interesting. And Alex, I think that with this, right, this was the last topic of today. Again, you know, we went through quite quickly, but full of information about, you know, ROI and influencer marketing in 2025, right?

25:36And then AI, big, big buzzword, but still, you know, like very interesting to see into the do's and don'ts. and then finishing with, again, like athletes and how brands can really use them in the best way possible. So thank you, Alex, for joining me today and for sharing your knowledge with us. Thank you. Thank you very much. It was a very interesting conversation, but the buzzwords is starting to work nowadays. We live in the wonderful ages, so it's cool to have this conversation and see how many things start to work. so if ever if somebody thinks about influencer marketing and start doing something there keep trying the world is changing and you want to be a part of these changes i agree 100 percent if not you're already late to the game uh this was the the influence factor by the influencer marketing factory and i'll see you in the next episode