'The whole industry is so messed up': Google may finally be bringing some order to the messy influencer sector

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Google's CEO Sundar Pichai last week talked up FameBit — an under-the-radar influencer platform the company purchased in 2016.
FameBit is now helping broker deals between YouTube talent and brands while taking a 10% cut of the deals.
This has the potential of bringing order to the highly fragmented influencer marketing sector.
It also put Google in an atypical role of servicing creative campaigns, something it's historically been happy to cede to third parties.

Google is looking to bring some order to the chaos that is influencer marketing.

Specifically, YouTube, through its 2016 acquisition of the influencer-centric firm Famebit, is connecting YouTube creators with brands, and facilitating the creation of sponsored videos. The unit got a rare brush with fame last week — a shoutout on Google's otherwise low key earnings call.

“Half of the creators that used FameBit in the first three months of 2018, doubled their YouTube revenue,” said CEO Sundar Pichai during the call.

YouTube has historically shied away from this labor intensive, service-oriented aspect of the business, leaving that to multi-channel networks like Fullscreen or Maker Studios (which eventually sold to Disney), talent rep firms and a host of ad agencies, PR shops, and influencer database startups.

But in the past few months, via FameBit, Google has increasingly been playing matchmaker with ...

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