Dentsu partners Meta to scale influencer marketing with AI

NEW DELHI: The creator economy is getting crowded and brands are looking for smarter traffic controllers. Dentsu has partnered with Meta to help brands manage influencer marketing at scale, as advertisers increasingly shift from working with a handful of creators to coordinating campaigns involving hundreds or even thousands of influencers.

According to Digiday, the partnership is designed to solve one of the creator economy’s biggest operational challenges. While investment in influencer marketing continues to rise, many brands still lack the technology and infrastructure needed to discover, manage and measure large creator networks efficiently.

At the heart of the collaboration is Dentsu’s creator marketing framework and technology stack, built using Meta’s APIs and platform capabilities. The system is intended to streamline creator discovery, campaign activation and performance measurement, making influencer campaigns more scalable and data-driven.

The partnership reflects a broader evolution in social media marketing. Rather than relying solely on celebrity influencers, brands are increasingly building campaigns around large communities of micro and nano creators to improve reach, authenticity and audience engagement. However, managing these creator ecosystems manually has become increasingly complex, prompting agencies to invest heavily in automation and AI-powered tools.

Dentsu is already deploying its Creator & Trends Studio (CATS) platform, an AI-powered solution that uses Meta’s APIs to identify creators based on audience fit, content themes and participation in emerging online trends. The platform is designed to help marketers respond more quickly to cultural moments while reducing the time spent on creator discovery.

Several global brands, including Galderma and Elizabeth Arden, have already adopted the framework. The move aligns with a wider industry trend towards creator diversification. L’Oréal now works with around 500,000 creators annually, while Unilever activated 50,000 influencers during its FIFA World Cup campaign.

Industry estimates also point to continued momentum for smaller creators. According to eMarketer, micro- and nano-influencers are expected to account for almost half of influencer marketing investment in the United States this year, reflecting growing advertiser preference for highly engaged niche communities over individual celebrity endorsements.

According to Digiday, Dentsu has already seen improvements in campaign performance through creator-led advertising formats. Elizabeth Arden, for example, reported stronger ad recall and improved sales conversions using Meta’s partnership advertising products.

The collaboration also underlines Meta’s growing emphasis on strengthening its creator ecosystem. By working more closely with global agency networks such as Dentsu, the company aims to make creator-led advertising a larger part of brand marketing strategies while accelerating adoption of its creator and partnership advertising solutions.

As influencer marketing matures into a mainstream advertising discipline, success is increasingly being determined not by the number of creators a brand works with, but by how effectively technology can orchestrate them at scale.