Influencer marketing – the new age of advertising

As influencer marketing continues to rapidly grow and spread across the globe, Netccentric (ASX: NCL) has taken exciting strides building on its heritage as a pioneer in end-to-end social media influencer marketing solutions.

The Singapore-based company owns the largest revenue stream from the influencer market within Malaysia, with its sights set on becoming the largest in the whole of South East Asia in the not too distant future.

Researchers have identified that influencer marketing generates a better return on ad spend compared to other channels.

As for Netccentric, in FY2021, the company boosted its revenue by 45% year-on-year to S$11.5 million – with 84% of that coming from repeat clients.

The company experienced increased revenue across its four complementary segments: Nuffnang, Plata & Punta, Sashimi and Nuffnang Live Commerce.

Nuffnang is the company’s influencer platform, which started off as a blog advertising platform in 2007 in an effort to monetise the significant number of bloggers.

Over time, and with the growing age of social media and online web presence, the platform became Malaysia’s leading social influencer and content marketing solution provider, which connects brands to more than 15,000 influencers and content creators across the region with a combined total of more than 20 million engaged social media followers.

Digital media and marketing solutions

Netccentric’s Plata & Punta and Sashimi provide end-to-end digital media and marketing solutions.

Plata & Punta offers consultation services to clients to build and enhance their marketing strategies and efforts through data analytics, while Sashimi is used to provide brands with a holistic marketing solution including content creation, design, and campaign management for web and mobile to drive sales online.

Nuffnang Live Commerce brings opportunity

Nuffnang Live Commerce (NLC) was established towards the end of 2020 in an effort to capitalise on the shift towards online sales and virtual interactions due to the pandemic lockdowns.

NLC enables social influencers to promote merchandise over live video streaming via social media platforms and consumers can purchase easily through the comment function.

It saw immediate success in FY2021, with more than S$4.3 million of total gross merchandise value (GMV) transacted via the medium. It also showed 294% year-on-year growth in GMV for Q1 FY2022.

Future of influencer marketing

With social influencers having the ability to reach specific audiences, they’re beginning to be perceived by companies as an invaluable component of any marketing scheme.

The global influencer market is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 32% from US$6 billion in 2020 to US$24 billion by 2025.

It is believed this surge is due to the rapid shift towards video-based OTT media and adoption of ad-blocking software.

In Malaysia, social media advertising expenditure (AdEx) contributed to more than 38% of the country’s total AdEx in the first half of 2021.

When Netccentric established Nuffnang, within three days it had 300 bloggers and within five years it was known across multiple countries – becoming a leading blog advertising community with more than 13 million views a day.

This shows the rapid growth a global influencer can have on a brand, with the company now covering Malaysia, Taiwan, and Singapore – connecting millions across the globe.

Some of the larger brands that Netccentric works with include GroupM, Unilever and McDonalds.

On a wider scale, brands are beginning to pick up on the significance of prioritising influencer marketing, as seen by the 42% and 280% increase in revenue year-on-year from Unilever and Fraser & Neave in Q1 FY2022, as well as the 109% and 635% rise from Hasbro and Dutch Lady in Q3 FY2021.

Continuing to innovate

In Q4 2021, Netccentric also launched The Merchist, which aims to encourage entrepreneurship and foster growth for influencers.

There is undoubtably a huge opportunity for live commerce in China, which leads the market –growing its GMV by RMB1,24 billion (US$179 billion) within three years and contributing to 10% of its total e-commerce in 2020.

This week, Netccentric announced it was debuting a Web 3.0 creator platform in a joint venture with Malaysia-based RedSquare Technologies, with the aim of bringing non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to the masses.

The joint venture will launch NFT Technologies (NFT Tech), which Netccentric says will drive the duo’s strategy to be at the forefront of the Web 3.0 revolution.

NFT Tech will enable brands to issue NFTs in collaboration with influencers.

The NFTs on the new platform will have real-world utility, which means they can be exchanged for physical goods, services and rewards.

“We see a strong growth trajectory ahead for well-regulated NFTs that provide safety, security, credibility and a positive user experience,” Netccentric executive chairman Ganesh Kumar Bangah said.