Tribe Dynamics Is Being Acquired

Allison Collins
·2 min read

Tribe Dynamics, an early mover in influence tracking, is being acquired by CreatorIQ, an influencer marketing platform.

Since its founding in 2012, Tribe has become a key player in the beauty industry, helping brands track how well their products are permeating social media with its earned media value metric, which major corporate beauty companies have used to evaluate potential acquisitions.

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While it started in the beauty category, Tribe has expanded into apparel, too, and works with LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton and Fashion Nova, in addition to businesses including Estée Lauder. Tribe has tracked more than 1.5 billion pieces of content since it started, according to the company.

Other Tribe clients include Gymshark, Boohoo, Revolve, Too Faced, Anastasia Beverly Hills, Kylie Skin, KKW Beauty, Elemis, Shein, Deciem, Everlane, ColourPop, Tatcha, Drunk Elephant, Huda Beauty, Alo Yoga and Kendra Scott.

According to sources familiar with the deal, the acquisition price was around $70 million.

The acquisition solidifies CreatorIQ’s position as the largest influencer marketing platform, according to the company. CreatorIQ recently raised $40 million from TVC Capital, Kayne Partners Fund and Unilever Ventures, as well as new investor Silver Lake Waterman.

Together the companies plan to provide marketers with more services to manage and measure their relationships with influencers.

“It has the opportunity to be a multibillion-dollar [business] from a market cap perspective,” said Conor Begley, president and cofounder of Tribe.

He said that as part of CreatorIQ, Tribe will be able to integrate with new social platforms, including Twitch, to provide customers with “additional insights and capabilities.” Tribe will continue operating as a stand-alone business, he said, and employees will stay on.

He said the deal came about from an existing relationship he had with CreatorIQ chief executive officer Igor Vaks, who he met in Los Angeles a few years ago. “We had a conversation during a fundraising process. We received term sheets and I met up with Igor, who said, ‘hey, my team has been looking at acquisitions.’ That’s how it got sparked,” Begley said.

“With this union, CreatorIQ is accelerating our focus on advanced data science and analytics,” Vaks said in a statement. “Applying Tribe Dynamics’ proprietary models, which are the standard in the beauty and fashion industries, to additional verticals will allow us to offer analytics and measurement benchmarks for the entire industry.”

CreatorIQ, which focuses on paid marketing, works with marketers at Airbnb, Calvin Klein, Disney, Sephora and other businesses. The business was founded in 2014.

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