Israeli digital technology firm EngageYa and leading all-in-one influencer marketing solution Find Your Influence (FYI) have announced a strategic partnership to bring EngageYa’s product StoriYa to the US marketplace. StoriYa enables publishers to deploy the popular social “stories” model on the open web, giving their users modern content experiences and expanding story-based advertising to new audiences and outlets.
As part of the partnership, FYI will extend the reach of its influencer marketing campaigns by offering the ability to run influencers’ content across StoriYa’s inventory in the United States and in other countries where the product already is live.
“Instagram Stories have become a common component of most influencer activations,” explains Jamie Reardon, co-founder and CEO of Find Your Influence. “While the short-term impact of stories is significant, the 24-hour timeframe has led to clients looking for other avenues to distribute the content. Our partnership with EngageYa will allow us to unlock the potential and significantly increase the reach and overall value of the assets created for our clients.”
For brands, StoriYa offers a chance to extend the reach of existing campaigns in a format that has proven successful across social platforms. Publishers, and any site with content, can deploy a modern storytelling model that has proven to draw young audiences, keep users on-site, and convert.
“Whether you’re a journalist or a brand, the social stories paradigm is perfect for telling your story,” says Barak Frohlinger, EngageYa’s co-founder and CEO. “There is simply no reason for it to be limited to the social media sites. Everyone can use it, all should benefit, and businesses have a chance to truly turbo-charge.”
StoriYa has been implemented on sites across Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, boosting engagement and creating new inventory for dozens of news, lifestyle and vertical publishers. This partnership represents its first foray into the United States, and the company has also recruited a US-based rep team and has retained Jon Housman, a former leader at News Corporation and the streamer Ora.tv, as an advisor.
The story format first became familiar on Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook – featuring video, photos and text overlays in a vertical aspect ratio and dynamic style. More recently it has been deployed by LinkedIn and Twitter.
StoriYa enables publishers to integrate channels by importing to their site’s social content – including their own Instagram Stories, Tweets, YouTube videos and Pinterest content. It can also create automated feeds of articles from various categories and engage users with polls and quizzes. Additionally, it enables Stories to be built from scratch with its proprietary content management system – all with the reaction and sharing functions familiar from social media.
“Providing brands with the ability to amplify their messaging via Stories as ad units across different channels is critical,” explains Charlie Brugnolotti, SVP of Client Development with Find Your Influence. “Authentic influencer content creates a lasting impact on consumers and we are now providing the means to share those authentic and personal experiences with brands across premium ad inventory, further increasing the value of the content.”
StoriYa allows publishers a choice of placement types including the classic circles carousel familiar on Instagram, and a squares carousel in the style used on Facebook, ideal for placement within articles. An innovative third option – Inread StoriYa – presents the Stories already open within the text of an article, in standard IAB formats. In all cases, StoriYa resides within the publisher’s own user experience.
“EngageYa has been helping publishers and brands with advertising technology for years, and with StoriYa they can take it to the next level,” adds Frohlinger.