News UK – publisher of The Times and The Sun – has today added an influencer marketing agency to its suite of commercial practices.
Announced during Advertising Week, The Fifth claims that it will “professionalise” the influencer marketing space whilst focusing on “storytelling”. The agency aims to work with influencer talent to ensure brands have access to authenticated audience data, transparency of follower growth and standardised reporting.
Oliver Lewis, founder and managing director of the independent agency, told Mediatel that News UK was keen to future-proof its business by investing in a rapidly evolving media sector.
“We think over the course of this year around 25% marketing budgets will be diverted by big brands towards influencer marketing,” Lewis said. “But there needs to be a cleaning-up of the market – money is pouring in, but there are challenges that exist, including a lack of professionalism, transparency and a lack of real measurement.”
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Lewis added that brands require more support identifying the right talent, building longer-term partnerships, authenticating their background, proving meaningful ROI and delivering authentic and diverse stories.
The Fifth – named as the logical extension to The Fourth Estate which forms the backbone of News UK’s established publisher brands – will be powered by an exclusive partnership with intelligence platform CORQ, which combines journalistic insight and analysis to offer brands a talent selection strategy that exceeds technology and automation. The agency will also work with Q-83 to ensure direct API data interaction.
Instead of segmenting influencers into micro, macro and celebrity categories, the agency classifies talent under nine “faces”, which include the Artist, the Humourist, the Enthusiast, the Journalist and the Cosmopolitan.
“Brands are looking for a more trusted partner,” Lewis told Mediatel. “It’s a wild west out there and it needs a new agency partner to come in to help and support it.”
Dominic Carter, group chief commercial officer at News UK, added: “As an established, trusted media owner, we believe that we have a responsibility to offer our brand partners transparent and effective solutions across all areas of the marketing mix.
“The Fifth is an exciting extension to our portfolio: it complements our existing offer, and diversifies our service offering to answer the needs of our brand partners. It’s a great example of how we are future-proofing our business.”
News UK’s commercial portfolio also includes The Bridge and creative agency The Bridge Studio, social media intelligence agency Storyful, and video marketplace Unruly.
The influencer market is forecast to be worth around $10bn globally by 2020.
