Imagine a world where every time you share a link with a friend, you get paid. How many TikTok videos have you shared since the beginning of the week?? What if every time you generated buzz online, you got a tip? This is the future of advertising that Cliqki is building.
Cliqki is an advertising technology platform and social media marketplace where brands, content owners, and creators can advertise their products and services, and offer incentives to users and influencers who help promote those services. .
Co-founded by Adetomi Odufuye (CEO) and Aderemi Odufuye (CTO) and launched in April 2021, with Adekunmi Odufuye as CCO, Cliqki was born from personal observations when the founders were trying to promote a brand of financial services, music content and to grow their following on a crypto platform. They realized that most major ad tech platforms generate millions of dollars in ad revenue from brands/businesses and only share a small portion with influencers and users on their platforms.
Cliqki democratizes advertising by taking a small commission and making most of the ad revenue available to the user community. With Cliqki, everyone is a paid influencer.
The future of advertising
Advertising is often ambitious; brands ask celebrities and big names to advertise their products and ordinary people who aspire to be like that celebrity buy the products. But with the advent of social media and the emergence of influencer advertising, brands are discovering that a combination of celebrity advertising and the organic, more personal reach of micro-influencers is needed to fully maximize their advertising reach and their marketing goals.
A Twitter from 2016 report found that when seeking product recommendations, 56% of consumers sought advice from friends and 49% relied on influencers. Micro-influence, which is even more personal than influence, is set to become even more essential to brand storytelling post-pandemic, as media consumption has shifted from glossy magazine images to TikToks and Instagram stories to the House.
According to a 2019 study on millennials – the biggest consumers of social media – and the effect of micro-influencer marketing on their buying habits, millennials view influencers as an authentic way to evaluate brands and micro-influencer products and marketing “triggers millennials to engage.” in subsequent searches for a specific product or others in the same category.
Word of mouth carries weight on social media and in the modern world, being relatable is currency. From reality TV to YouTube and TikTok, content powered by everyday people who look and feel like us is thriving. Social media and social media advertising are driven by the perception of authenticity. How much do we love this YouTube makeup artist who looks like a friend? How many movies and stories do you watch per day?
You don’t have to be a celebrity to get involved anymore, everyone is connected now and everyone is influencing everyone.
For brands, content creators and businesses, social media advertising is not always easy as all major ad tech and social media platforms offer a large audience but an impersonal touch, they also cost more and most of the profits go to advertisers. The services of these platforms often have restrictions on the types of content allowed and general restrictive advertising rules that make it more difficult to promote content.
Moreover, in countries like Nigeria where there is a monthly dollar spending limit, creators even struggle to pay for marketing campaigns to run on social media.
What Cliqki offers is a chance for brands to personalize and maximize their marketing reach and for everyone who contributes, both influencers and you who share a link, to benefit.
Cliqki functions as a platform to facilitate both the advertising and payment aspects of marketing. It is unique in this area because most ad platforms only advertise — you pay, they advertise. Cliqki goes the extra mile to share these benefits with everyone involved in the process, right down to the regular non-influencer who simply shares a link with a friend. It also offers brands the ability to reach a larger, more personalized audience at a lower cost.
How it works
Brands and content creators come to the platform, upload the content or campaign they want to promote, and then attach a budget to it by buying tokens.
Each time a Cliqki user shares the content on behalf of the brand, a unique URL is created and the user/influencer is rewarded each time someone clicks on the shared link. Rewards per click can vary from ₦10 to ₦1000 depending on the budget set by the brand.
Rewards are credited to the user’s wallet and can be redeemed either by converting tokens into cash directly to their bank account or into airtime, gift certificates and other prizes.
What’s next for Cliqki?
The first of its kind in Africa, Cliqki started with around 100 users when it launched its beta in 2021 and has since become one of the fastest growing influencer marketplaces with thousands of users currently on the platform and a constantly increasing growth rate.
Cliqki is leveraging trust and established relationships to change the future of advertising. They take big brand advertising and their impersonal approach to individual levels where users can earn for their engagements and control what they want to promote.
“Our mission is to empower people to promote their product offering to a diverse and relevant audience, as well as provide a way for others to earn money while using their familiar social media platforms. We are extremely excited to share some of the progress we have made over the past few months as we remain committed to our vision of building Africa and ultimately the world’s largest marketplace for influencers, where users can monetize their social media engagement. – Adetomi Odufuye (CEO of Cliqki)
Cliqki’s vision is to become the largest influencer marketing platform in Africa and beyond. The startup just raised an undisclosed amount from angel investors including Sixteen Sands, Adeta Capital and Aztec Synergy.
They have also signed with several major brands, including one of Africa’s largest financial institutions, major commercial banks, content creators, and are looking to sign many other major brands.
Cliqki is currently registered as a Delaware C corp with offices in the United States and Lagos.
They hope to first establish their proof of concept in Nigeria, before expanding to other places in Africa, including Kenya, Ghana and South Africa, and eventually the rest of the world.
