How top brands are hunting for the next breakout influencer

Marketers at CMO Insider's "The AI Marketer: Creator and Influencer Edition" roundtable held during Advertising Week New York shared their strategies for discovering the next breakout influencer talent.

Derek French A version of this post appears in the CMO Insider newsletter.

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Marketers are getting smarter about finding their next influencer partners .

At a CMO Insider roundtable during Advertising Week New York, top marketers told us how they're using AI-powered platforms , social listening tools, and some surprisingly old-fashioned tactics to discover new creators and niche communities.

Meredith Diehn, SVP of marketing at Goodwipes, said her company recently adopted the influencer discovery tool Modash, which has significantly reduced manual work in identifying potential partners, freeing up the team to review creators' previous content and determine whether they're a good fit.

Goodwipes' searches using Modash are remarkably granular, Diehn said.

"I'm going to find a creator who is a girl with IBS who lives in Nashville," she said.

Diehn's team is also using a social listening tool called Nectar to uncover microcommunities already talking about the brand that might not have been obvious targets.

Diehn said Goodwipes is exploring opportunities to reach communities like postpartum mothers, whose needs can make flushable wipes particularly useful.

Alicia Latoya Richardson, head of community and partnerships at the creator membership community FiveTwoNine, said brands are finding success using a tool called Companion, from its parent company Billion Dollar Boy Group, to search for creators across different geographies and demographics and assess their potential value.

For its client Adobe, for example, FiveTwoNine has used Companion to analyze posts created by attendees at its events and estimate the resulting earned media value . (EMV is a measure of what the same reach or engagement would have cost if bought through paid ads.) "AI has definitely elevated the way we report to clients on value," Richardson said.

Mars Pet Nutrition is also using AI-powered creator-discovery tools to help it cast a wider net when searching for creators and narrow the pool to candidates most likely to deliver reach and engagement.

But there are still some areas where the tech falls short, said Paolo Narag, creative excellence lead at Mars Pet Nutrition.