How influencers are changing advertising, with Digitas CEO Amy Lanzi

On today’s Decoder, I’m talking to Digitas CEO Amy Lanzi — and you’ll notice this episode is a little different. We recorded this conversation live onstage in New York City at an event graciously hosted by Adweek. 

I’ve actually been dying to talk to Amy for some time. Digitas is one of the most important agencies in the entire advertising business, with huge clients and massive influence over big platforms like Instagram and YouTube. After all, they’re the ones buying the ads that keep all of those companies afloat.

Amy is really sharp on what value a company like Digitas brings to its clients and the role her company plays in the online ecosystem. But it seems very clear that all of that is changing rapidly as more and more ad dollars go directly to creators and influencers on those platforms instead of ad agencies and the platforms themselves.

As you’d expect, Amy has a lot of thoughts about this. Digitas is part of a huge holding company called Publicis Groupe, which just spent $500 million to acquire an influencer marketing agency called Influential. Amy was on the committee that made that deal, and you’ll hear her explain how and why huge advertising companies are starting to automate and operationalize influencer and creator content. 

The idea is to use AI to examine all of the content on the platform, find the right influencers reaching the right audiences, and use software to contract with them on sponsored content at scale. That’s a big idea that’s sweeping the advertising industry, and I wanted to know how Amy saw it all playing out in the months and years to come. 

We also spent some time talking about a smaller question that no one seems to know the answer to: What is the difference between a creator and an influencer? Let me know if you know the answer.

Some further reading you’ll hear us talk about: