ORLANDO, FL (June 26, 2019) – IZEA Worldwide, Inc. (NASDAQ: IZEA), operator of IZEAx®, the premier online marketplace connecting brands and publishers with influential content creators, has announced the release of Instagram Stories in IZEAx 3.0 Unity Suite. Marketers can now add a series of Instagram Story frames to any influencer marketing campaign within Unity Workflow. Both photo and video Stories can be created either as standalone sponsorships, or as part of a larger sponsored content initiative that includes other social channels such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Campaigns can be multi-channel in nature, with any number of posts on any number of channels over any period of time. Unity Workflow simplifies and streamlines the execution of influencer marketing campaigns while simultaneously providing an extremely flexible construct that can support the most complex influencer engagement types.
Instagram Stories are among the fastest growing segment of social media use. Facebook has reported that Instagram stories are now being used by half a billion people every single day and a recent study conducted by VidMob revealed that 68% of Millennials consume stories on Instagram each day.
“Marketers are seeing a tremendous amount of opportunity with Instagram Stories and other forms of ephemeral content,” commented Ted Murphy, Founder and CEO of IZEA. “The ability to create short, authentic video content is particularly of interest for those targeting millennials. With Instagram Stories in IZEAx we have created a streamlined workflow to produce sponsored ephemeral content, both as standalone assets and in support of a larger multi-channel approach. Being able to create and measure multiple media types with different requirements and performance KPIs is where Unity Workflow shines brightest.”
The addition of Instagram Stories is the latest upgrade to IZEAx 3.0, which IZEA released in late April 2019. The new platform integrates all aspects of content creation, distribution, payments, and communications into a seamless and flexible architecture designed for enterprise influencer and content marketing organizations. Instagram Stories is integrated into Unity Suite Analytics, providing metrics at the campaign and project level, with multiple detailed metrics reports for each engagement type. The analytics for Instagram Stories are also available through the Unity Suite Analytics API for enterprise customers.
In addition to analytics, IZEA has integrated its Disclosure Engine into Instagram Stories. Disclosure within sponsored Instagram Stories is required and automated within the platform, helping both brands and Influencers properly disclose paid sponsorships within Instagram Stories content. All of the content produced by an Influencer for a campaign is also programmatically tagged and categorized using ContentMine, IZEA’s AI powered content repository.
