Influencer marketing agency NEON Group has forged a partnership with ecommerce growth agency Ecom Nation.
The partnership combines NEON’s creator strategy, influencer management and UGC capabilities with Ecom Nation’s paid media, funnel optimisation and e-commerce performance expertise.
Nina Robertson, who has built NEON Group from the ground up, told B&T: “The reality is brands are becoming far more commercially focused with creator marketing. The days of running influencer campaigns purely for visibility are fading.”
Five years ago, an influencer marketing pitch to brands was simple. Pay a creator with an engaged following, watch the traffic spike, track it with a discount code and then calculate your return on spend.
Then the creator economy scaled, and platforms became oversaturated with sponsored content, audiences became harder to move and that reliable spike flattened.
The direct-to-sale conversion that had justified influencer fees and agency retainers quietly eroded.
“There are so many creators and so many ad placements going out, that the intrinsic value of those influencers has changed and it’s not necessarily just the direct-to-sale conversion where we’re seeing it occurring,” Robertson said.
Rather than selling to their own audience, creators became the raw material for paid advertising and the metrics that mattered shifted accordingly.
The problem, according to Robertson, is that much of the influencer industry kept selling the old story while the reality on the ground had moved on.
“A lot of influencer agencies or talent agencies aren’t transparent with that evolution. That’s something we really focus on, being transparent around the reason why creators are used,” she said.
Robertson said the partnership with Ecom Nation aims to close the gap between creator content and commercial outcomes.
Robertson considered dozens of agencies ro partner with but Ecom Nation came out on top and already works with some of NEON’s existing clients.
The integrated service spans Meta Ads, TikTok Ads, Google Ads, creator whitelisting, UGC performance creative and ecommerce scaling strategy.
Rather than briefing creator and media agencies separately, NEON and Ecom Nation work from a shared brief.
Robertson used a simple example to illustrate. A brand launches new mascara and books five UGC creators to produce content showcasing the product. That content goes into paid ads running on Instagram. The ads drive traffic to the ecommerce site where the sales are tracked. What worked gets scaled and what didn’t gets cut.
The partnership announcement arrives at a time when the marketing budgets and accountability are under greater scrutiny.
“Influencer marketing is no longer operating in isolation,” Robertson said. “It’s becoming part of a broader growth ecosystem combining creators, paid media, UGC and ecommerce performance.”
