The Company Continues to Hit Major Business Milestones, Drive Innovative Solutions for its Clients, and Expand Offerings and Teams Worldwide
BEN Group, the leading global creator economy AI company that connects brands and creators to each other as well as their audiences through influencer, streaming, TV, music, and film content, kicked 2022 off with record-breaking business milestones, executive team hires across the organization, and expanded technology and business offerings.
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“It’s incredible to witness today’s boom in US and international content, as well as audience reception to the entertainment available to them”
BEN’s product placement and influencer marketing divisions have continued to see steady growth, with its product placement division seeing a record hitting revenue quarter with revenues up 39% YoY. The company is on pace to surpass the 15,000 pieces of executed content in 2021 and has welcomed exciting new clients to its roster in Q1, including Gladskin, Mission Foods, Omnilux, and Metafy. To facilitate its ongoing growth, BEN brought several industry veterans onto its team, including Jon Youshaei as its first Head Creator Advisor for TubeBuddy and Tim Mulligan, J.D., as Chief Human Resources Officer, as well as 55 new hires across its global offices.
BEN’s AI Research and Development arm continued to invest heavily in technology that is able to learn like a human expert but scale like a machine. One third of BEN’s new hires to date have been in its technology, AI, and product teams. BEN saw breakthroughs in predicting audience retention rates on content by leveraging its proprietary algorithms for YouTube. By leveraging the unstructured data in a piece of content, BEN can further its mission and vision to empower creators to create better content through data. With this new breakthrough, BEN is approaching the hard to answer question of audience engagement and will be able to create tools that will be able to provide its creator and brand clients predictions on viewership retention throughout content before it goes live.
In Q1, BEN officially merged Greenlight, its division focused on product licensing and rights clearances, into its product placement division. This move will enhance BEN’s ability to execute on global marketing partnerships, incorporating talent and entertainment properties to help brands tap into fan passion for TV shows, films, and musical artists.
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With globalization at the forefront of TV and film priorities, BEN’s product placement division focused on expanding its US and international partnerships, becoming the exclusive partner of the Prop Masters Guild and a leading sponsor of the British Film Designers Guild Awards. These collaborations allow BEN to work directly with creators behind the scenes and connect brands with placement opportunities across the globe. This has resulted in placements like Benjamin Moore in Lizzo’s “About Time” music video; Lucky Charms in Amazon’s streaming series “As We See It;” and Wix in Peacock’s VOD premiere film “Marry Me.” BEN also drove a 63% YoY increase in the placements it negotiated and executed in the UK and EU, demonstrating the company’s rapidly growing international presence.
“It’s incredible to witness today’s boom in US and international content, as well as audience reception to the entertainment available to them,” said Ricky Ray Butler, CEO of BEN Group. “The stories hitting screens now are more diverse than ever, because the decentralization and globalization of content is opening doors for creators from all different backgrounds to share their art. BEN and our clients are dedicated to supporting those creators through brand partnerships, to help boost unique points of view. Our technology and our team are leading the charge of making it possible for 1,000 Hollywoods to exist – not just one.”
BEN’s influencer marketing division also expanded its international reach, becoming one of the first 10 founding members of the Influencer Marketing Trade Body (IMTB) in the United Kingdom. The IMTB aims to make the creator economy more sustainable and accessible for all, and BEN’s partnership speaks to its dedication of supporting creators across the globe. As a whole, the IMTB and its members will be a guiding voice for the influencer marketing industry, by helping shape standards and practices, working with policymakers and building a strong community for creator marketing companies, brands, and creators alike. Additionally, BEN’s influencer marketing division expanded its footprint into LATAM as well as Eastern Europe, furthering its international coverage and ability to execute campaigns on a global scale.
TubeBuddy, BEN’s creator audience growth and content optimization tool, also achieved major milestones. Since its acquisition by BEN in 2020, TubeBuddy’s user base has doubled, skyrocketing from five million to ten million users in less than two years. Along with the growth of its user base, the company launched TubeBuddy University and celebrated its second annual International Creator Day on April 23. The 8-hour livestream featured top creators including MrBeast, Typical Gamer, Neekolul, devinsupertramp, RCLbeauty101 and Javi Luna, who participated in panels, games, interviews, and other sessions. This year brought even more participation amongst creators and viewers with a 300% increase in engagement for the virtual event.
