Latest / Influencer Marketing with Fexingo: Creators, Sponsorships, and Modern Endorsement Deals / Why Influencers Are Now Buying Retail Media Ad Space
Transcript
- Lucas: If you've listened to this show before, you know we track how influencers are turning into full-blown media buyers. They've bought TV spots, billboards, podcast ads. But the latest frontier is one that feels both obvious and surprising: retail media networks. Luna: Retail media — that's the ad inventory inside Amazon, Walmart, Instacart, places where people already have their credit card out. Brands have been spending billions on it. But now influencers are buying it for themselves? Lucas: Exactly. And I want to anchor this in a real example. There's a beauty influencer — I'll call her Mia, not her real name — who launched her own skincare line last year. She did the usual influencer thing: Instagram posts, YouTube tutorials, a discount code. But earlier this year, she decided to spend fifteen thousand dollars of her own money on Amazon Sponsored Brands ads. Luna: Fifteen thousand is a real bet for someone at her level — she's got about 200,000 followers, not a mega-influencer. Lucas: Right. And she treated it like a direct-response campaign. She set up product targetings for competitors' brands, keyword bids for terms like 'vitamin C serum,' and even retargeted people who'd viewed her product but hadn't bought. Six weeks later, she told me she hit a four-times return on ad spend. Luna: That's impressive. But it also raises a question: is she essentially competing with the same brands that might sponsor her? Some of those competitors' products she targeted — they could be potential partners. Lucas: And that's the tension. Brands are used to paying influencers to endorse their products. Now influencers are paying Amazon to run ads that send shoppers to their own products, sometimes using keywords from those same brands. It's a shift from influencer as endorser to influencer as advertiser. Luna: It also changes the measurement game. When a brand sponsors a post, attribution is fuzzy. But retail media gives you a click to purchase link that is trackable down to the SKU level. Lucas: That's the major advantage. In traditional influencer marketing, you might see a spike in sales but you can't always prove causation. On Amazon or Walmart's ad platform, you know exactly how many units sold from that ad. That data is gold for a creator who wants to prove they can drive sales, not just awareness. Luna: And it's not just Amazon. Walmart Connect, Instacart's Carrot Ads, even smaller retailers like Target's Roundel — they all have self-service ad platforms now. Any creator with a product to sell can open an account and start bidding. Lucas: Before we go deeper, I should mention something about this show. We keep these episodes ad-free by design. No sponsors, no mid-roll interruptions. If these marketing conversations have sparked something you've actually used on the job or in your own side projects, and you want to support that independence, the link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a small way to keep this resource free and focused. Luna: Yeah, it's a model that works because of listeners like that. And now back to the retailers — I think a lot of people don't realize how accessible these platforms are. You don't need a huge brand budget. Lucas: Exactly. The minimum spend on Amazon Ads is something like ten dollars a day. Walmart Connect has no minimum. So an influencer with a modest product line and a few hundred dollars can test ads. The barrier to entry is just the ad creative and a bit of strategy. Luna: Which is a huge change from even five years ago, when retail media was mostly reserved for big CPG companies with dedicated media agencies. Lucas: Right. And the data piece is crucial. When a brand runs a retail media campaign, they get back search term reports, conversion rates, customer demographics. Now influencers are getting that same data. Mia told me she learned which keywords drove the highest conversion rates for her serum — and then optimized her product listing copy based on that. She essentially used Amazon's data to improve her product page. Luna: That's smart. She's using the ad platform as a research tool, not just a sales channel. Lucas: And she's not alone. I've talked to a handful of creators in the last quarter who are doing this. One is a fitness influencer who sells protein bars on Amazon. He told me he spends about two thousand dollars a month on Sponsored Products ads and sees a consistent three-times return. He calls it 'the most predictable part of his business.' Luna: Predictable is a big word in influencer income, which is notoriously lumpy. Lucas: Absolutely. Brand deals come and go. But if you have a product and you can run ads with a known cost per acquisition, that's a lever you control. Some creators are even borrowing against their ad performance to fund inventory. Luna: Wait — they're getting loans based on their Amazon ad data? Lucas: There are fintech firms that offer revenue-based financing to Amazon sellers. They look at your ad spend efficiency and sales velocity to determine credit. So a creator with a strong return on ad spend can get working capital faster than a traditional bank would give them. Luna: That's a whole new level of financialization for influencers. They're not just content creators; they're small business owners with sophisticated ad operations. Lucas: And it feeds into something we've talked about before: influencers are becoming media owners. But now they're also becoming demand-side platforms. They decide where to allocate their ad dollars across different retailers, and they optimize like any brand. Luna: Does this create friction with the brands they work with? If an influencer runs ads targeting a brand's keywords, that brand might see it as competing for the same customer. Lucas: It can. I've heard of cases where a brand discovered an influencer's retail media campaigns and felt blindsided. The influencer was already getting a sponsorship fee from the brand, but then also running ads that could intercept shoppers who were searching for that brand. Some brands have started adding clauses in contracts that restrict influencers from running ads on retail media networks targeting the brand's products. Luna: So it's becoming a negotiation point. 'We'll pay you, but you can't bid on our brand name on Amazon.' Lucas: Exactly. And some influencers are pushing back, saying that their own product line is separate from their endorsement work. But the lines blur when the influencer's name is attached to both. Luna: I wonder if this will push more influencers to create their own products specifically to have something to advertise. If you have a loyal audience, retail media can be a direct line to monetization without relying on brand deals. Lucas: That's already happening. The creator economy has seen a surge in 'digital native vertical brands' started by influencers. And retail media is the distribution engine. I think we'll see more influencers hiring media buyers or even in-house ad ops people. Luna: That scales up the business. One person running Instagram is different from someone managing Amazon ad campaigns with budgets in the tens of thousands. Lucas: Right. And the platforms are responding. Amazon recently launched a Creator Connections program that matches influencers with brands for sponsored content, but it also lets creators access advertising tools. Walmart has a similar program. The retailers want to capture this spend. Luna: So the retailers are essentially saying, 'Bring your own product and your own audience, and we'll give you the ad platform.' Lucas: Exactly. It's a three-way win: the retailer gets ad revenue, the influencer gets sales and data, and the shopper gets relevant products. The only potential loser is the traditional brand that used to have exclusive access to those ad slots. Luna: But from the influencer's perspective, it's a powerful tool. Mia's case shows that with a relatively small budget, you can get real traction. I'm curious what the ceiling is. Could a top influencer spend a million dollars on retail media and see a return? Lucas: I think some are already doing that, quietly. There are creators with seven-figure product lines who run retail media campaigns year-round. They treat it like a brand would. The difference is that they have a personal connection with customers that a faceless brand doesn't. Luna: That personal connection might actually make the ads more effective. If I see an ad for a protein bar from a random brand, I might scroll past. But if it's from a fitness influencer I follow, I'm more likely to click. Lucas: And that's the ace up the influencer's sleeve. The retail media ad can feature the creator's face, their story, their credibility. It's not just a product shot; it's an endorsement within the ad itself. That blend of content and commerce is hard for traditional brands to replicate. Luna: So what's the next step? Are we going to see influencers building their own demand-side platforms or programmatic stacks? Lucas: Maybe. For now, I think the trend is toward specialization. Some influencers will become expert retail media buyers, others will focus on content. But the ones who master both — content creation and paid media — will have a massive advantage. Luna: It's a new kind of hybrid creator. Not just someone who makes videos, but someone who runs a media business with its own ad budget. Lucas: Exactly. And as retail media networks grow — they're projected to hit over one hundred billion dollars globally by next year — the opportunity for creators will only expand. We're in the early days of a fundamental shift in who gets to be an advertiser.