[AI Revolution](121) AI Connecting Companies with 'Customized Influencers'... Featuring

AI Analyzes Data of 16 Million Influencers
Quantifies Influence to Recommend to Clients

It is the era of 'influencer marketing.' The cases of companies utilizing influencers such as YouTubers with a large number of subscribers for marketing are gradually increasing. However, with so many influencers, there is always a concern about whom to select and what kind of effects to expect. CEO Jang Ji-hoon founded Featuring in 2019 to solve these concerns of companies. Featuring quantifies influence by analyzing data of 16 million influencers domestically and internationally using its self-developed artificial intelligence (AI). Based on this, it matches advertisers with suitable influencers to assist efficient marketing.

Jang Ji-hoon, CEO of Featuring, is explaining AI technology.

On the 13th, CEO Jang said, "Our mission is to datafy all online influence and benefit businesses," adding, "Currently, we analyze the influence of influencers and content mainly on social media and provide it to companies." Featuring's core technology is the social networking service (SNS) data engine 'Featuring AI,' which analyzes 16 million channels and over 300 million pieces of content in real time.

This AI clusters followers of SNS channels by interests and filters out followers who are ineffective for marketing. It also analyzes the performance of channels and content to predict marketing performance. CEO Jang explained, "It has excellent scalability as a model that can be commonly applied regardless of social media platform, region, or country," and added, "Currently, we are focusing on the Korean and Japanese markets, but when expanding to the US or Europe, by collecting influencers and content from those regions, we can provide services of the same quality as we do in Korea and Japan."

As the business use of SNS and influencers becomes common, the number of clients using Featuring's services is steadily increasing. Currently, more than 12,000 clients use Featuring's services. Especially, as the use of so-called 'micro-influencers' with fewer followers has emerged as the mainstream, Featuring's technology has become more essential. CEO Jang said, "The demand is increasing mainly for micro-level channels that can achieve effects with good content relative to cost," and added, "Usage has increased not only among large corporations but also small businesses."

Jang Ji-hoon, CEO of Featuring

CEO Jang, who was in charge of service planning and business development at Kakao after working at Naver, faced much opposition when building the Featuring AI data engine. Influencer marketing typically used pools such as multi-channel networks (MCNs), which are like agencies, and it was considered difficult to change this method. What CEO Jang trusted was technological capability. He said, "Over the past five years, we have focused on technology development, experiencing trial and error while building the data engine and accumulating meaningful indicators," and added, "As a result, most domestic marketing agencies now use Featuring's services. We possess the most advanced technology in the domestic social media and influencer marketing market."

Featuring has greatly contributed to enabling influencer and SNS marketing in the domestic market to be analyzed and measured based on data. Now, the goal is the global market. CEO Jang said, "Featuring's localized version for Japan is scheduled for official launch next month," and added, "Large corporations have recently requested influencer marketing agency services targeting North America, and we expect to achieve meaningful results in the second half of this year and next year as well."