Maverick raises $120 million in funding to expand its influencer marketing platform
Maverick raises $120 million in funding to expand its influencer marketing platform
In recent years, the rise and influence of influencers has played a significant role in the evolution of the modern online social landscape, particularly in the realm of politics. Following this announcement, a company that is capitalizing on the influencer juggernaut and how it is manifesting itself in the world of marketing has raised an unprecedented amount of money to ensure that it can continue to ride the wave.
It has raised $120 million in growth equity funding from Summit Partners. Mavrck has developed a platform that enables brands and media companies to source and engage with influencers for marketing campaigns and has raised $120 million in growth equity funding to date. In order to continue investing in its platform and expanding its business, Mavrck will use the funds received. It is not intended to be a valuation disclosure.
With this investment, "we will be able to double down on our industry-leading platform and double our team," explained co-founder and CEO Lyle Stevens in an email interview. "We will become the most intelligent platform on the market by doing so and leveraging our petabytes of historical data... On the Mavrck platform, this information will be used to power recommendation engines, which will assist enterprise marketers in connecting with the most appropriate creators in the most cost-effective manner possible."
The company currently has some strong traction and momentum
"Influencer Index," as the directory is referred to by the company, currently includes "millions of contactable macro- and micro-influencers across all major social platforms," according to Stevens. Over 500 brands and 5,000 marketers have already signed up for Mavrck in order to connect with those influencers. The company has connected brands with more than 3 million influencers and creators, who have collectively reached more than 240 million consumers. This has primarily been accomplished through "native" sponsored content that has been posted on various social media platforms, including videos and photos as well as blogs and podcasts.
It is the technology that is at the heart of Mavrck, according to Stevens, that is built on patented algorithms and first-party opt-in data, which brands can use to identify and connect with influencers who have a voice in the audiences that they are trying to reach. For this purpose, it has developed approximately 25 different search filters, which include demographics of the audience, historical performance, and fraud risk, to help them narrow down the larger directory to those who meet their requirements. It then provides a platform for them to collaborate on projects, with the possibility of being compensated in the future. As he continued, "We also provide our customers with the technology they need to invite or import existing influencer and consumer relationships in order to build their own ambassador network."
Spending on influencer marketing has increased by 55 percent in the last year, with two-thirds of brands now employing some form of influencer marketing strategy. In today's market, it is estimated to be worth $100 billion.
As a result of the growing popularity of content creation as a secondary or primary source of income, Stevens observes that the creator economy is "exploding at breakneck speed." He cites eMarketer's prediction that 50 million people will identify as "creators" by 2020, which is based on current trends. For those who have children, the results of a Harris Poll conducted last year, which revealed that approximately 30% of children expressed an interest in becoming a "YouTuber," may cause you to nod ruefully in recognition (only 11 percent stated "astronaut").
According to Stevens, "We want to empower this new creative class by connecting them to the world's enterprise consumer brands, allowing them to turn their passion into a source of revenue."
In addition to connecting marketers with influencers, Mavrck is responsible for keeping an eye on the areas in which influencer content is having the greatest impact on business. Social media remains the most powerful single platform with the greatest scale, despite the fact that it is a highly fragmented space (blogs, for example, can still be quite powerful, particularly with certain types of products and consumers).
In 2016, Instagram made the decision to display content algorithmically rather than chronologically, which Stevens believes has helped it maintain its position as the most popular platform for influencer content in the modern era. However, while Instagram continues to be the dominant social media platform, this is beginning to shift. As a result of the Tiktok 'For You' Page algorithm, the company has seen a 400 percent increase in the number of creators activated on TikTok by its brand customers year over year. We predict that TikTok will become the dominant influencer marketing platform within the next five years if this trend continues.
Stephen Stevens believes that influencers and influencer marketing are not just a passing fad, but are here to stay no matter which platform emerges as the market leader.
According to him, "If you think about your most recent purchase, the likelihood is that you were influenced or persuaded by what other people say and display online, rather than by what a brand directly said to you," he says. "Additional people could include friends, like-minded strangers, or online creators who you choose to follow on social media. Social proof has grown in importance as a brand-building tool for consumer-oriented businesses over the years. As a result of COVID and the changes in consumer purchasing behavior that have resulted from it, consumer engagement with creators has increased by 70%. As a result, brands are increasing their investments in social proof in order to not only thrive, but also to remain relevant and survive."
That alone is sufficient to persuade investors to change their minds.
Managing director of Summit Partners, Michael Medici, said in a statement: "At Summit, we have made investments across the commerce sector – in both brands and the technologies that enable their growth – and we are firm believers in the impact and potential of authentic brand relationships as a means of creating value."
Summit Partners' Sophia Popova, a principal, explained that brands are increasingly attempting to leverage the "extremely long tail" of content creators in order to increase brand awareness and influence purchase behavior. "In order to assist brands in their efforts, Mavrck's platform was developed specifically for this purpose. The opportunity to collaborate with Lyle and the Mavrck team on this next stage of growth is an exciting one for us." Both of these players have been added to the board in this round of play.
