Niche connects brands with some of the most popular Vine and Snapchat stars and Instagram photographers. And advertisers are dropping six-figure sums on the average deal.
Jack Bethmann
In August this year, Jack Bethmann quit his day job and began filming Vines — six-second video loops on an app created by Twitter — full-time.
He's able to do that thanks in part to Niche, an online service that connects people like Bethmann with brands that will pay to have the most popular Vine accounts promote their campaigns. Started last year with his co-founder Darren Lachtman, the company has raised $3.1 million in venture capital financing and now has more than 5,000 people signed up for its service, co-founder Rob Fishman told BuzzFeed News.
"We've seen the past year the average [advertising] buy size was $5,000 to $10,000, now on average clients are spending $100,000 to $500,000 on a single buy," he said. "That's not quite TV dollars yet, but we're in an era of rapid transformation, and brands are going kind of crazy for these creators. We've been well positioned because we have the definitive network."
With a staff of 27, Niche essentially does two things: it allows brands like HP, Coca-Cola and Warner Brothers to run campaigns with popular accounts on apps like Vine, Snapchat and Instagram; and it offers those popular users a suite of analytics tools that helps them track which pieces of content perform best. Thanks to services like Niche, larger companies are finding new ways to reach audiences for advertising, and power-users on Instagram and Vine are able to turn their hobby into a part- or full-time job.
Niche
Bethmann, who makes stop-motion videos, is not alone, and services like Niche are helping people like him do deals with big companies and make serious money running advertising campaigns. In his case, he runs a kind of online studio through his company Six Second Promotions.
Here's how it works: when a company like HP is interested in running a campaign, it will buy a certain number of engagements, usually around something like a hashtag. Companies can track views, new followers gained and pieces of content produced, but typically track active engagements as a proxy for customer reach and satisfaction. Niche then matches the company up with users that are open to posting a piece of content — like a Vine — that is tied to the brand campaign.
