As the media and entertainment industry continues to evolve, the integration of technology and innovative strategies has become pivotal. In this dynamic environment, Medianews4u.com caught up with Amev Burman, co-founder Adfluence Hub. He focusses on influencer marketing and digital transformation.
There is a rise of AI-driven content creation, immersive media experiences, and a growing dominance of digital platforms in India. His expertise in leveraging technology to optimise influencer marketing campaigns aligns with the industry’s shift towards data-driven audience engagement and direct-to-consumer models.
His journey, from co-founding Viraliti to establishing Adfluence Hub, reflects his understanding of the media ecosystem and his commitment to driving innovation.
Excerpts from the interview:
Q. Clients now expect tangible, actual ROI from influencer marketing activities. The level of content engagement is not enough. How is this going to reshape the influencer marketing industry in 2025?
The era of chasing likes for vanity’s sake is over. Today’s brands are asking: “Great content—but did it convert?” That’s the pivot. And at Adfluence Hub, we’re not just watching it happen—we’re driving it.
We believe that storytelling should earn its seat at the strategy table. Which is why, in this next phase of influencer marketing, performance isn’t a buzzword—it’s the backbone.
Now, it’s not just about how content makes audiences feel—it’s about what it makes them do. Did they comment with purchase intent? Click through to a trial? Redeem a creators-only code? These are the numbers that count, and our AI-powered platform measures them all—seamlessly combining creator data with customer behaviours in a single smart dashboard.
We’re also witnessing a strong trend: the surge of long-term, ROI-positive partnerships with micro and nano creators. These are creators who perhaps don’t possess the largest audiences—but they’re the ones moving the needle in the most important ways. In skincare industry alone, their portion of the content increased from 83% in 2023 to 89% in 2024. Why? Trust multiplies.
At Adfluence Hub, we’re making attribution actionable. We give brands the tools to go from storytelling to sales tracking—without losing the soul of the message.
This isn’t just the future of influencer marketing. It’s the intelligent, outcome-driven era we’ve been building toward all along.
Q. Another issue is influencers often not following ASCI guidelines like disclosing paid content partnerships. What should the way forward be?
The future of influencer marketing hinges on trust, and transparency is its cornerstone. As the ecosystem scales, the need to uphold ethical standards becomes more urgent. The solution? A thoughtful, tech-backed, and collaborative approach:
1. Strengthened Advocacy & Enforcement: ASCI guidelines need to be promoted more aggressively in the industry. Think of ASCI not as a rulebook, but as a shared commitment of trust between creators, brands, and the people they reach.
2. Education at Scale: As the influencer universe continues to grow, consistent education about norms of disclosure is necessary. Influencers need to grasp that transparency is not a checkbox, but a responsibility.
3. Smart Compliance Tools: At Adfluence Hub, we’ve developed AI-driven tools that do more than manual checks. Our platform scans captions, descriptions, and even analyses videos to identify ASCI compliance. When something’s wrong, our notification engine automatically notifies all stakeholders involved, ensuring quick correction before the issue arises.
In other words, compliance has to be proactive, rather than reactive. Through a convergence of education and advanced technology, Adfluence Hub is leading the industry by example in ethical influencer marketing.
Q. Right now inflation is high, salary hikes are low, there are concerns of a possible recession. How could this impact the influencer marketing space in 2025?
In 2025, economic uncertainty is not a hindrance, but a compass for change in the world of influencer marketing.
Yes, inflation is high. Wage growth is slow. Recession may be looming. But where others see peril, the influencer marketing space sees adjustment. Brands will likely make the move from volume to value, looking for leaner, more intelligent, ROI-based partnerships that penetrate the noise.
We’re entering an era where authenticity isn’t optional, it’s currency. Performance-led campaigns, micro and nano influencers, and hyperlocal voices will become essential players. Why? Because when budgets tighten, relevance becomes priceless.
The Adfluence Hub is not a crystal ball: “impact over impression” isn’t a prediction, it’s our current reality. We’re already witnessing more profound partnerships and transparent metrics as well as a new generation of creators who don’t just create — they plan. They are creators who fuse creativity with strategy, who care just as much about conversion as they do about content.
Influencers need to be nimble: diversify their revenue, extend community bonds, and prioritise engagement rather than vanity. Simply, creators who understand their customers the way that brands understand their budgets will flourish.
This isn’t a downturn. This is a profound pivot. And for people willing to change, it’s an unlimited opportunity for their own growth.
Q. While AI-driven content creation is on the rise, is the role of humans still important to make people feel an emotion? There is doubt about whether AI generated content can generate the required emotional response among the consumer.
AI is revolutionising the game of content, no question about that. But as for evoking actual emotions, the throne still belongs to human beings. At Adfluence Hub, we believe that although AI solutions can increase productivity, they simply can’t match the authenticity and emotional resonance that human creators bring to the table.
Individuals don’t tend to simply follow, they relate to, their influencers. They find pieces of their own narratives in them. That emotional connection, be that of happiness, sympathy, hope, or motivation, can’t be manufactured. It is a result of experience, cultural instinct, and human imagination.
Yes, machines can write. But only a human can ever really resonate. And in influencer marketing, resonance creates relevance, and relevance fuels results.
That’s the magic of human-driven storytelling. And that’s what we advocate at Adfluence Hub: stories that don’t just perform, but move.
Q. What was the gap seen in the market that led to the establishment of Adfluence Hub? So far what progress has been made?
When influencer marketing began to blow up, something became glaringly obvious—brands were moving at high speeds in a digital world using slow, cumbersome methods. No system, no clever engine, existed to drive the increasing complexity of creator partnerships.
Adfluence Hub emerged to fix that exact issue, by combining marketing instinct with intelligent technology. We saw a chance to redefine the way that brands interact with creators—faster, smarter, and at scale.
Q. Where is the company now?
We didn’t just create a piece of software—we engineered a new standard for influencer marketing platforms:
● Competitive Intelligence: See how you compare and how you’re being heard. Track industry-wide Share of Voice, as well as competitor campaigns, in real time.
● Consumer Insights: Go deep into what your customers watch, talk about, and follow. It’s not data—it’s brand empathy at scale.
● Influencer Discovery: Use over 22 smart filters and deep performance analytics to find the creators who actually move the needle.
● Operational Efficiency: Execute high-volume micro/nano campaigns with automation in shortlisting, AI filtering, AI mandate checks, performance reporting, and payments—all from one platform.
● Campaign Reporting: Achieve a one-view dashboard of live sentiment monitoring, purchase intent analysis, and benchmarking to track what counts.
At Adfluence Hub, we’re not simply streamlining influencer marketing—we’re future-proofing it.
Q. What can you tell us about the R&D that goes into tools like your campaign tracker? How does it enable brands to remain flexible and responsive in a constantly evolving market environment?
Research and development at Adfluence Hub is not a backstage formality — it’s a part of our DNA. The campaign tracker, for example, is one of several tools born from continued conversations with the industry.
We developed it together in close collaboration with brands such as HUL, Zomato and Zee5, and layering that with actionable insights gained through analysing over 500,000 influencer posts.
It is this collaborative, real-world feedback loop that shapes the core of our platform: agility. It provides brands with real-time insights into campaign performance, audience perception and market trends.
So when fashions shift — or consumer behavior turns on a dime — brands don’t just respond, they’re prepared. The campaign tracker isn’t merely showing what’s happening; it’s telling you where to go.
It’s R&D for a reason—creating tools that allow marketers to stay ahead in an industry that refuses to stand still.
Q. Are there any projects the company is working on that you can share, related specifically to improving current products and solutions, and related specifically to launching new ones?
We’re not only keeping pace with the industry at Adfluence Hub, but actually reinventing the influencer marketing space.
Guided by our commitment to making influencer marketing both intelligent and easy, what we’re doing today is constructing solutions that bring creativity and automation, data and action, into a beautiful marriage, so brands can move faster, scale wiser, and create lasting impact.
What’s new at Adfluence Hub:
Video AI Content Checker
Our advanced AI now checks influencer submissions against campaign requirements in real-time, minimising hand work and slashing campaign execution time by more than 85% for large-scale activations. That’s not just intelligent. That’s game-changing.
Next-Gen Social Intelligence Platform
We’ve rolled out advanced analytics that break down performance by industry, brand, and product — giving marketers the clarity they need to build smarter strategies and track what’s really working.
UGC Amplification Tools
From selecting standout content to sharing it across channels, our latest tools make managing user-generated campaigns easier, while keeping creative control in the brand’s hands.
Next up in the Roadmap:
Enhanced UGC Ecosystem
We are enabling brands to tap into UGC in all shapes and sizes with AI-supported solutions for capturing, handling, and repurposing the content.
Deeper Martech Integrations
Brands will be able to link the dots along the entire customer journey, linking influencer interactions to sales, customer retention, and LTV increase in the near future.
From day one, Adfluence Hub’s DNA was built on a single concept: enabling brands and agencies to utilise AI and data-intelligence to maximise the effectiveness, efficiencies and scale of their influencer-marketing programmes.
In a world of content overload, it’s intelligent automation and real-time analytics — not guesswork — that empower brands to act faster, spend smarter, and drive results that truly move the needle.
Q. Are CMOs still struggling to truly understand and prioritise influencer marketing?
The game is now different, and so are CMOs.
Once the cause of skepticism, influencer marketing now is viewed as a strategy. Marketing leaders of today do not simply comprehend influencer marketing, they are planning budgets for it. Why? Because it reaches consumers right where they really are: scrolling, viewing, sharing, and participating with creators they trust.
Influencer marketing has become more than a trend, a high-performing, tested channel for brand storytelling, trust, and performance. Today, CMOs know that influencers don’t merely blast a message; they frame perception, create communities, and drive conversion.
At Adfluence Hub, we enable brands to connect with culture, rather than audiences. Through insight-led influencer campaigns, we assist marketers in tapping into attention-hungry environments, converting influence into impact. CMOs are no longer asking “why influencer marketing?”—they’re asking “how do we do it better, faster, and with the right partners?”
Q. When a traditional brand looks to adopt a direct-to-consumer model what role does influencer marketing plan in the digital media mix?
For traditional brands stepping into the direct-to-consumer world, influencer marketing is no longer just a complementary tool, it’s a strategic catalyst for transformation.
Why? Influencer marketing unites the old and the new. It revives a brand’s heritage while forging active, trust-based connections with contemporary consumers in the digital world. Through the leverage of creators with credible voices and dedicated audiences, brands can accelerate awareness, attain authenticity, and drive action in the now, all at scale.
At Adfluence Hub, we don’t believe in impressions alone. We believe in authentic influence. Influencer campaigns give brand leaders the power to humanise their messages, share compelling narratives, and connect with their audiences fully where they are, scrolling, looking, and buying. Whether through short-form video or long-form storytelling, influencer-led content becomes an active sales machine throughout the digital funnel.
And the outcome? Stronger brand equity. Higher engagement. More conversions. How old brands turn into digitally-native icons, by converting influence into impact.
Q. Is the way brands and agencies connect with audiences shifting fast in this new era of immersive experiences, driven by breakthroughs in AR, VR, and mixed reality?
Indeed, the audiences’ engagement environment is fundamentally changing, as they become increasingly motivated by the growth of immersive storytelling and experiential storytelling driven by AR (Augmented Reality), VR (Virtual Reality), and MR (Mixed Reality).
Today’s consumers don’t just scroll, they seek to experience. Passive viewership is being replaced by interaction, personalisation, and co-creation. This shift is reshaping how brands and agencies think about digital engagement, especially in influencer marketing.
Immersive technology at Adfluence Hub is seen as the next big thing in authentic brand-creator partnerships. As yet nascent, AR/VR-enriched campaigns already foreshadow the potential of future, virtual product demonstrations, interactive discovery paths, and 3D influencer storytelling that invites users into the world of the brand.
And the keyword is connection. Immersive content doesn’t simply engage, but creates lasting emotional bridges. As the trend continues to grow, brands and agencies that adopt it early won’t simply remain relevant, they’ll drive the conversation.
In a more virtual but more personal world, influencer marketing that’s fully immersive is no longer a “what if,” but a “what’s next.”
