Impact, the global leader in partnership automation, announced the acquisition of ACTIVATE, a leading brand and SaaS platform in the influencer industry. The acquisition, effective today, includes the industry-leading end to end platform for influencer discovery; reporting; and campaign management, including collaborations across all major social platforms. Together with Impact’s existing influencer platform partners, the combined offering now becomes the #1 global influencer marketplace available today with over 300K opt-in qualified and vetted influencers.

The influencer market is projected to reach $22 billion by 2024. Types of partnerships range from coupon and loyalty to premium publishers to strategic B2B relationships to app integrations – brands understand that influencers offer unique authenticity, reach, and conversions, and thus represent a key component of the overall partnership ecosystem. Impact’s Partnership Cloud automates and simplifies the process of discovering, recruiting, onboarding, optimizing, and reporting across all types of partnerships, with the most mature clients using partnerships to drive more than 28 percent of total company revenue. Now with ACTIVATE’s capabilities, clients can further succeed in discovering creators and managing influencer partnerships.

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For ACTIVATE’s influencer community, this increases their opportunity to work with over a thousand of the largest and fastest-growing brands around the world, and the technical integration between ACTIVATE and Impact provides them with a more feature-rich experience not found on other influencer platforms– most notably, Impact’s automated contracting and flexible payment processing, which ensures partners get paid reliably, by whatever terms and currency they require.

This news follows a series of big wins by Impact, including the recent release of a commissioned study with Forrester Consulting, “Smooth your partnership journey by learning from high-maturity companies,” the launch of their annual conference-turned-virtual Impact Growth, and the news of their global expansion through the announcement of their Germany office opening.

“While many in our industry focus mostly on servicing traditional coupon and loyalty partnerships, Impact is serving the demand of our clients looking for growth from all partnership types,” said David A. Yovanno. “ACTIVATE’s deep expertise within the burgeoning influencer industry strengthens our offering to brand and agency clients by providing the tools to find and manage thousands more quality content creators. Influencers in turn are searching for brand partners and with Impact’s portfolio of the industry’s largest retailers, financial service providers, direct-to-consumer businesses, and more, we will truly create partnerships that provide significant growth for both sides. “

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Through their rich history in the creator and influencer space, ACTIVATE honed expertise in campaign-based SaaS technology. “ACTIVATE and Impact together offer intuitive, empowering technology that puts users in charge of their influencer campaigns’ success,” says Kim Riedell, influencer partnerships expert and former ACTIVATE client. “They are a great match, both leaders in their respective industries and driven to create innovative SaaS platforms that create profitable partnerships.”

“The influencer industry has transformed from individual creator transactions to valuable, long-term partnerships since the beginning of our company; along the way we saw firsthand the opportunity that online communities and their avid fans provide for brands to connect with their audiences authentically,” said Nicholas DiSanto, ACTIVATE CEO. “It’s a natural fit to pair this within the larger breadth of partnerships led by Impact to drive this new stage of growth in the industry.”

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