Influencer Marketing Comes of Age in Iran

Iranian companies are now getting in on the so-called ‘influencer marketing’ with positive results, according to sources in the marketing sector.

Influencer marketing is a form of marketing in which the focus is on influential people rather than the target market as a whole. The website identifies individuals with a massive influence over potential buyers, and orients marketing activities around those influencers.

One company specializing in the influencer market strategy to grow its  business is, adsensor.ir, which has shifted its traditional marketing direction towards social media applications like Telegram and Instagram, WEBNA reported.

The startup -- which has obtained permit from Iran’s Online Businesses Guild and Cyber Police -- now targets Telegram and Instagram users with a large following to push products and brands.

After Adsensor selects accounts with a large following, they are co-opted by the company and paid a commission for promoting different brands and services.

Companies are increasingly interested in this new sub-genre of marketing as it targets key demographics under 30, which have tended to turn away from traditional forms of advertisement like television and banner ads on websites.  

 Time-Based Approach

In time-based approach, the ads are placed in channels and Instagram pages for a specific period, for example 24 hours.

The CPC (cost per click) method means customers will pay the advertisement price based on the number of clicks of social media users on the links in their banners.

The base cost is calculated according to the popularity of the advertiser and the influencer pages or channels.

The company says it conducts its projects in collaboration with 8,000 famous influencers on social networks.

Competition Growing

Due to the situation where subjects and themes are deemed unworthy of television ads, not to mention the high cost per second of TV ads, companies are switching to the influencer model to target customers more directly.

Adsensor faces competition from existing and new companies as well as freelancers who sell their accounts to certain brands on a case-by-case basis.

eAds, an unofficial representative of Google ads in Iran, presents Persian panel of Google advertisement and is able to offer Iranian advertisements through the system. The unique thing about this system is that it accepts payment in  Iranian rials unlike the usual Google Ads service which bans Iranian transactions due to US sanctions.

Clickyab is another marketing service which lets business owners display their ads on users’ smartphones depending on their location.

That system uses GPS positioning to target restaurants near mobile owners and pings them with interesting things to do.

It offers the possibility of displaying ads based on the common language of users’ smartphone or tablet and also lets them determine if they want to send the ads to users with different internet speeds such as 2G, 3G, 4G, and LTE.