Lounge Lizard Worldwide Inc., an award-winning digital marketing agency, has officially released its highly anticipated resource: “How to Properly Pay Influencers in 2025.” This comprehensive guide is designed to help brands rethink influencer compensation and structure high-performance partnerships in the evolving creator economy.

Why This Guide Matters in 2025

As influencer marketing continues to dominate digital strategy, brands face a critical challenge: how to compensate creators in ways that are fair, data-driven, and results-oriented. Lounge Lizard’s guide provides:

• Updated influencer rate benchmarks

• Best practices for campaign ROI measurement

• Insights into affiliate and performance-based compensation

• Blueprints for ambassador programs and tiered payouts

"Brands today must look beyond vanity metrics and focus on authentic engagement and ROI,” said Ken Braun, Co-Owner of Lounge Lizard. “Our 2025 guide equips businesses with the tools they need to structure influencer partnerships that deliver measurable results."

Trends Covered in the Guide

Engagement Over Followers

Gone are the days of paying based on follower count alone. The guide emphasizes authentic engagement, content quality, and audience alignment as more accurate indicators of value.

Platform-Driven Partnerships

More brands are turning to influencer marketing platforms to streamline everything from hiring to campaign tracking and payments. Lounge Lizard highlights the pros and cons of these platforms—and how to choose the right one.

Smarter Payment Models

• Affiliate/Commission-Based Structures

• Tiered Compensation Plans Based on Performance

• Long-Term Brand Ambassador Agreements

These adaptive models reward creators for driving real business results, not just reach.

What This Means for Brands in 2025

By embracing performance-first compensation strategies and leveraging the tools now available in the market, brands can:

• Improve campaign transparency

• Build long-term relationships with high-performing creators

• Maximize ROI from every influencer dollar spent

Final Thoughts

“How to Properly Pay Influencers in 2025” reflects Lounge Lizard’s continued commitment to leading digital innovation. For brands that want to future-proof their influencer strategies, this guide is more than just advice - it's a blueprint.

Emplifi, the leading unified customer engagement platform, has released a new report titled “Marketing Across Generations: How Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers Engage with Brands Differently.” The research, conducted in partnership with Alchemer, surveyed nearly 1,000 U.S. consumers and delivers powerful insights into how different generations interact with brands, especially on social platforms.

Social Commerce Surges Among Younger Generations

• 53% of Gen Z and 56% of Millennials made a purchase via social media in the last 3 months.

• In contrast, only 29% of Baby Boomers report social purchases.

• Supported by EMARKETER’s findings, Gen Z adults (ages 18–24) spend over twice as much time on social platforms as the general population.

“This isn’t just a trend—it’s a fundamental shift in how consumers shop,” said Susan Ganeshan, CMO at Emplifi. “Brands must evolve with these behaviors to stay competitive.”

Generational Content Preferences: Interactive vs. Informative

• 46% of Gen Z want brand videos to be interactive, while

• 84% of Baby Boomers prefer informative, straightforward messaging.

• Gen X and Millennials fall between, with a mix of inspiration, authenticity, and substance.

Ganeshan adds:

“Younger generations crave dynamic, real-time engagement, while Boomers value clarity. A one-size-fits-all content strategy just won’t work anymore.”

Purchase Drivers: Visuals, Humor, and Practicality

• 42% of Gen Z and 38% of Millennials are influenced by the visual appeal of a post.

• 31% of Gen Z are more likely to purchase from a brand that uses humor.

• Baby Boomers (29%) are the least influenced by design or humor but most influenced by clarity and value.

Customer Care: Human Touch Still Matters

• 81% of Boomers and 80% of Gen X prefer speaking with a human agent, not bots.

• 54% of Boomers still use phone support, whereas

• 30% of Gen Z and Millennials prefer social media DMs for help.

“AI can streamline support, but the human connection is still essential for trust,” said Ganeshan. “Balance is key.”

Takeaway: Generational Understanding Drives Better Engagement

Emplifi’s report makes one thing clear: Each generation engages with brands differently, and companies must tailor their content, support, and commerce strategies accordingly:

Download the Full Report

Marketing Across Generations: How Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers Engage with Brands Differently

Five9, a leading provider of the Intelligent CX Platform, today announced the launch of Five9 Fusion for Salesforce a groundbreaking integration that combines Five9’s real-time system of action with Salesforce’s #1 AI CRM to deliver a unified, AI-elevated customer experience.

This next-generation solution empowers enterprises to orchestrate seamless, hyper-personalized customer interactions by tightly integrating contact center capabilities with Salesforce’s Einstein AI, paving the way for autonomous agent collaboration and advanced service personalization.

“Our expanded partnership with Salesforce represents a powerful combination of two industry leaders committed to transforming customer experience,” said Jake Butterbaugh, SVP, Global Partner Organization at Five9.

Features of Five9 Fusion for Salesforce

Unified Service Cloud Integration

• Full embedding of call metadata and recordings into Salesforce for a complete customer history view.

Seamless AI-Human Agent Collaboration

• AI agents handle self-service and pass summarized context directly to human agents—no more repeating information.

Five9 TranscriptStream

• Real-time voice transcription streamed directly into Salesforce, powering Einstein’s Next Best Action, Reply Recommendations, and Call Summaries.

Intelligent Voice Routing

• Smart routing uses real-time insights to match customers with the most effective human or AI agent, reducing wait times and improving personalization.

Built on 15+ Years of Collaboration

With over 1,000 shared customers and more than 160,000 service representatives supported, Five9 and Salesforce have a long-standing history of delivering joint innovation. The 2025 expansion reflects the growing demand for BYOT (Bring Your Own Telephony) and next-gen CX capabilities like:

• Bring Your Own Channel (BYOC) flexibility

• Integration with Salesforce Agentforce, a digital labor platform

• Native Einstein AI activation via Five9’s voice and data pipelines

“This powerful integration gives brands a competitive edge in delivering personalized experiences at scale,” said Nick Johnston, SVP of Strategic Partnerships, Salesforce. “Fusion for Salesforce brings the best of both ecosystems to enable smarter, faster, more satisfying service.”

Why It Matters

As customer expectations evolve, Five9 Fusion for Salesforce equips companies with a future-ready CX foundation that enhances:

• Speed to resolution

• Cross-channel consistency

• Agent productivity

• Customer satisfaction

• Long-term business outcomes

Availability

The Five9 Fusion for Salesforce bundle is available now, offering everything enterprises need to optimize their contact center strategy in the era of AI-driven service.

Outreach, the first and only AI Sales Execution Platform, today announced an expanded partnership with Siemens Digital Industries, the global technology leader. The collaboration empowers Siemens’ global sales teams with AI-driven prospecting, forecasting, and pipeline management workflows—enabling smarter, more human-centric selling across 20 countries, with expansion planned in 2025.

“Outreach’s next-level AI-powered sales platform is a key tool in digitally empowering our sales team,” said Scot Gardner, EVP of Sales and Marketing at Siemens Digital Industries. “We’ve seen measurable impact from stronger customer relationships to greater business transparency.”

Highlights of the Expanded Collaboration

Unified Global Workflows

• Outreach consolidates sales execution data across teams and regions, improving visibility and process harmonization.

AI-Powered Forecasting

• Siemens is expanding use of Outreach’s forecasting technology to enhance accuracy, planning, and predictability across all territories by 2025.

Clean, Insightful Data

• By improving data hygiene and sales engagement insights, Siemens enhances decision-making and pipeline health.

Human-Centric Sales Execution

• With administrative tasks streamlined, sales reps can focus on what matters most: building trust and relationships.

“Technology is changing how revenue teams work,” said Abhijit Mitra, CEO of Outreach. “Outreach helps every rep perform like your best rep, and we’re proud to drive this transformation with Siemens.”

Global Impact, Powered by AI

Currently live in 20 countries, Siemens Digital Industries has already seen benefits from using Outreach’s platform—including improved rep productivity, stronger forecasting capabilities, and more responsive customer engagement.

As Siemens extends Outreach’s forecasting across its global footprint, the company sets a new benchmark for how enterprise sales teams combine AI, process optimization, and human insight to drive sustainable revenue growth.

NIQ , the global leader in consumer intelligence, today announced a strategic international partnership with The Trade Desk , the leading programmatic advertising platform. This partnership integrates NIQ's global buying data directly into The Trade Desk's platform, enabling advertisers to plan, activate, and optimize their campaigns with unprecedented precision.

“This collaboration marks a major step forward for the entire advertising industry,” said Joshua Pisano , Global Director of Media Products at NIQ. “Advertisers will be able to activate advanced audience segments, based on real-world purchasing behaviors, and significantly improve their marketing performance across the globe.”

Access to the largest omnichannel shopping database

Advertisers now benefit from audience segments built from digital and physical purchasing data , enriched by MRI-Simmons , a recognized expert in media planning in the United States.

Launch of the Consumer Canvas™ brand

The audiences will be marketed under the name Consumer Canvas™ , the result of a collaboration between NIQ and MRI-Simmons, dedicated to providing consumer data-driven targeting solutions to advertisers, agencies and brands.

New exclusive geotargeting capabilities

Thanks to a unique combination of consumer, retailer and market data, advertisers will now be able to refine their geographic targeting to focus on areas with high sales potential.
The Trade Desk is the first global platform to integrate these new segments, with an initial launch in Western Europe , followed by North America in Q2 2025 and other regions thereafter.

“This partnership empowers our clients to make truly data-driven decisions,” said Jay Goebel , VP of Data Partnerships at The Trade Desk. “It reinforces our commitment to providing brands with the most powerful tools to activate their campaigns with relevance.”

A new era for data-driven advertising

This partnership is part of a global trend where behavioral data plays a central role in advertising strategies. By integrating these advanced capabilities into its platform, The Trade Desk empowers brands to transform their media campaigns into real levers of performance, precision, and ROI .

Veritonic, the leading audio analytics and research platform, has unveiled a series of powerful updates to its Creative Measurement solution, designed to improve the testing and optimization of audio assets while enhancing team collaboration. These new capabilities will allow users to define study parameters with greater ease, streamline collaboration through customizable permissions, and provide a more intuitive setup process, ensuring that teams can align on objectives quickly and efficiently.

“With these enhancements, we’re putting more control, flexibility, and efficiency into the hands of our clients,” said Scott Simonelli, CEO and Co-Founder of Veritonic. “Creative is at the heart of audio performance, and our updates make it easier than ever to test, optimize, and align creative strategies within teams.”

Enhancements to Veritonic's Creative Measurement Solution:

Simplified Setup Process

Users can now configure study parameters more efficiently, reducing setup time and increasing operational efficiency.

Collaborative Features for Teams

Veritonic has introduced customizable permissions, allowing teams to invite collaborators with specific access levels, improving cross-functional collaboration.

Integrated Comments and Feedback

Direct commenting functionality within the platform streamlines communication, ensuring that all team members are aligned on objectives and minimizing friction during the creative testing process.

Veritonic’s Platform: A Comprehensive End-to-End Solution

Veritonic continues to lead the industry as the only comprehensive end-to-end platform for audio analytics, supporting major brands, agencies, and publishers across podcasting, streaming audio, and emerging audio channels. These new features bolster Veritonic's position as the go-to platform for data-driven audio optimization, providing support at every stage of the campaign lifecycle.

WSI, a leader in digital marketing, is excited to announce a strategic partnership with Amplify Voice, a trailblazer in voice and conversational AI solutions for customer engagement and lead generation. This collaboration enhances WSI’s capabilities, providing businesses with AI-driven voice assistants, chatbots, and real-time messaging automation that elevate customer experiences while maintaining the human touch.

“At WSI, we’re always looking for technologies that empower our clients to grow smarter, not just bigger,” said Valerie Brown-Dufour, President of WSI. “Amplify Voice offers something unique—a solution that enhances customer interactions in a way that’s efficient, intelligent, and human. This partnership aligns perfectly with our strategy-first approach and allows our Consultants to deliver even more impactful, measurable engagement for our clients.”

Enabling Smarter, Always-On Customer Engagement

As customer expectations shift towards instant, personalized interactions, voice and conversational AI are becoming critical components of successful digital strategies. With Amplify Voice, WSI’s global network of Consultants now has access to cutting-edge tools that enable businesses to automate lead qualification, appointment scheduling, customer support, and more—all while offering seamless, real-time conversations.

Amplify Voice’s AI Receptionist and AI Sales Assistant empower businesses to engage leads instantly, ensuring that every interaction is meaningful and productive. Whether answering FAQs in the middle of the night or converting leads directly from a voice assistant, Amplify Voice makes it possible to engage customers at the right moment without increasing workload or compromising quality.

Turning Conversations into Conversions

This partnership takes WSI’s consultative approach to the next level by integrating AI technologies that align directly with clients’ business goals. By implementing Amplify Voice’s AI-powered tools, WSI clients can reduce friction in the customer journey and increase conversion rates through more personalized, efficient interactions. This partnership is built for measurable ROI, driving smarter customer engagement that yields lasting results.

“At Amplify Voice, we believe every conversation matters, and that each interaction should feel seamless, human, and impactful,” said Paige Pijuan, Chief Relationships & Culture Officer at Amplify Voice. “Partnering with WSI allows us to amplify our shared mission: smarter, more personal customer engagement at scale.”

Digital Silk, an award-winning agency specializing in brand strategies, custom websites, and digital marketing campaigns, is urging California tourism boards to adopt interactive web design in 2025. By doing so, the agency believes they can inspire Gen Z and millennial travelers, drive more itinerary bookings, and strengthen destination loyalty.

The Rising Importance of Interactive Tourism Websites

As the tourism industry continues to thrive, younger travelers are increasingly looking for immersive, mobile-first planning tools rather than traditional, static brochures. According to Statista, the U.S. travel and tourism market is expected to reach US $223.6 billion by 2025, with a year-over-year growth of 4.25%. Despite this, many regional tourism websites remain outdated, with heavy text and slow loading times that often lead to user drop-off before bookings are completed.

Interactive websites allow users to "test-drive" potential travel experiences like coastal tours, trails, or food scenes—all from their phones. These immersive tools shorten the path from inspiration to booking, making it easier for travelers to envision and plan their trips.

"California's scenery already captivates, but digital storytelling turns a casual search into a booked adventure," says Gabriel Shaoolian, CEO of Digital Silk.

Why Interactive Design Matters for Destination Marketing

The ability to engage users with authoritative visuals, real-time mapping, and integrated booking widgets is crucial to keeping them engaged longer. Statista reports that nearly 50% of U.S. leisure travelers start trip planning on mobile devices, emphasizing the need for websites that are thumb-friendly and responsive.

To enhance engagement and conversion rates, tourism boards must focus on key interactive features that make the planning process more enjoyable and intuitive.

Recommendations for California Tourism Boards

To better engage Gen Z and millennial travelers, Digital Silk offers the following recommendations for California tourism boards:

• Immersive Media: 360-degree video tours and drone flythroughs that load quickly and captivate users.

• Dynamic Itinerary Builders: Easy-to-use, drag-and-drop schedule tools that sync with calendar apps, making planning seamless.

• User-Generated Reels: Curated social media content that showcases real traveler moments, creating authenticity and engagement.

• Frictionless Booking: One-tap links to lodging, dining, and ticket partners that streamline the booking process.

Boards that embrace these innovations will not only lead peak-season demand but also capture repeat visits by creating memorable digital-first impressions.

"Visitors who see their trip take shape in real time feel an emotional pull to hit 'book now'. Interactivity is the new brochure," says Gabriel Shaoolian, CEO of Digital Silk.