Viral Nation is not about the vibes.
In an era where seemingly every company is adding generative AI to their business models, Viral Nation says it’s doing the same thing it’s been doing for years: using machine learning to put data into practice.
Earlier this year, we wrote about SocialAI, which CCO Nicholas Spiro described as a “decision-led intelligence module” that assists Viral Nation across various arms of its business.
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Now, Viral Nation co-founder and co-CEO, Mathew Micheli, wants to peel back even more layers and give people a look at the engine that is SocialAI.
He says that off the bat, he wants to be clear: SocialAI isn’t for sale.
“It’s not a SaaS product,” Micheli says. “It’s not something you can buy. You can’t log in and this entire thing is just available at someone’s fingertips. It’s the operating infrastructure of Viral Nation.”
SocialAI is embedded in Viral Nation’s creator/social intelligence teams, its brand safety system Viral Nation Secure, its creative studio, of course its technology teams, and “ultimately lives in our product stream too,” Micheli says.”Our products that our teams use all have these SocialAI-enabled functions directly within them.”
Those functions, and the data that spills through them, are part of what makes Viral Nation so valuable, he says–to both creators and brands.
For those unfamiliar, Viral Nation is one of the largest talent agencies in the digital content space. But it does much more than represent creators. As Spiro puts it, Viral Nation is a neverending “flywheel” of talent, marketing, creative studio, and technology divisions that constantly feed one another to help clients reach their desired audiences.
And if Viral Nation is a flywheel, SocialAI is the kinetic energy powering it. When Viral Nation makes a decision–for example, deciding which creator to recommend for a brand partnership, developing the creative direction for a brand’s campaign, or looking at how viewers reacted to a piece of content–it uses data from SocialAI. Every choice, Micheli says, is backed by hard evidence. He feels this sets Viral Nation apart from the rest of our industry.
“In the absence of really good data, it’s always been vibes,” he says. “For brands and agencies without this kind of data, if they’re decision-making on a creator, it’s historically been, ‘Oh, they look like they fit.’ But that’s not an intelligent enough assumption.”
He adds that SocialAI “fundamentally is going to change things in creator marketing, because it forces brands and agencies to get smarter with their decision-making.”
This doesn’t mean Viral Nation goes human hands-off with SocialAI’s output, though. “Listen, there’s always going to be something inherent about how people can spot an influencer who’s going to be a great fit,” Micheli clarifies. “That’s not going to change, because at the end of the day, data is not perfect.”
That’s why Viral Nation’s thesis with SocialAI is that “data needs to help turbocharge and enable human decision-making,” he says. “Instead of someone having to look through 1,000 creators to make a decision, now it’s cut by 10x or 20x.”
Using SocialAI’s data to cut down on human busywork means “people making more sophisticated decisions, versus it being the Wild West of just, ‘Hey, this creator has 50,000 followers and they look like a mom,'” he says.
Much of SocialAI’s input happens at the start of campaigns, but Micheli emphasizes that SocialAI keeps benefiting partners after campaigns end, helping inform future partnerships and creative.
“What’s the audience talking about in relation to this campaign? How are they interacting? Is it positive, negative? We gain a ton of tremendous insights for our clients about how people are actually talking about that brand,” he says. “We all know the comments are where the meat of every campaign lies. We get insights back to our clients about what the audience is actually saying, and report on where the opportunities exist. ‘This is how many people express purchase intent,’ ‘This is how many people are your potential customers.'”
“This is very much best-in-class humans powered by best-in-class technology,” Micheli explains. “We enable some of the best subject matter experts in the world, which we have here at Viral Nation, with this rich data, and we let decisions cascade and be made across the entirety of our business because of it.”
All of this, Micheli says, “is why you choose Viral Nation.”
While SocialAI was in place before the AI boom, Viral Nation says it’s used recent gen AI advancements to scale the system dramatically over the last 18 months.
“Ever since we started putting the entirety of the infrastructure in motion, our efficacy on choosing creators is at the highest it’s ever been,” Micheli says. “When we’re recommending a creator, it’s become a science. Our hit rate for approvals is at the highest it’s ever been as a business, because these data decisions are irrefutable now. It factors into all these equations–the qualitative and the quantitative–and it’s allowed our brands to have an elevated, seamless experience.”
Micheli says that ultimately, SocialAI and the boost it’s given Viral Nation have set his team up for “the biggest year we’ve ever had.”
Viral Nation is a Tubefilter partner.
