Centus, the Galway influencer marketing agency founded by Conor O’Flaherty, has appointed a new chief executive as total fees it has paid to influencers reach $100 million by the end of this year .
Flaherty, who founded the company as a teenager, said it now employs 35 people and its revenue – or the fees paid to the influencers it matches with direct-to-consumer brands – was about €30 million last year amounted to a profit of around €2 million.
To date, his firm has worked with nearly 150 brands and more than 10,000 creators — and their influencers are on track to have earned a total of $100 million in fees by the end of this year, he added.
Successful campaigns included one featuring Watford FC footballer Ben Foster and Irish clothing brand Gym+Coffee.
“Ben is not only a footballer, but also has a very successful YouTube channel. He is also a big fitness fan and a big coffee fan. The partnership made so much sense and worked really well,” said O’Flaherty.
Other brands his company has worked with include Audible, Squarespace, Harry’s, Skillshare, Function of Beauty, Ritual, Native, and Morning Brew.
The Galwegian entrepreneur has appointed Derry native Ross Brown as Managing Director of the company. A graduate of the University of Strathclyde, Brown previously worked in content and digital marketing for a number of companies in London before founding his own content marketing company there. He spent over four years at Centus where he was the third employee.
“Approximately 95 percent of our business is generated in the United States. That’s where the brands we work with have the biggest budgets. They’re a mix of apps, e-commerce, tech and tech services, and direct-to-consumer brands,” said O’Flaherty.
“The majority of our influencers are on YouTube. Revenue comes from branded content sponsors, and there’s some product placement, too. That was the formula that produced the best results that allowed us to scale.”
O’Flaherty initially worked as an influencer manager, but in 2017 had to switch to helping brands with their influencer marketing instead.
“Now we’re focused on helping our brands and content creators earn many hundreds of millions more in the years to come,” he added.
