From daredevil dives to marketing mastery: How Woomio's merger with Kolsquare will deliver even better results for influencer marketers in the Nordics

After bonding during bachelor party high jinks, Zeth Edwarsen and Torsten Bjorn Petersen transformed influencer marketing in the Nordics with Woomio. Now, their merger with Kolsquare promises even greater success for marketers across Europe.

Having bonded while doing handstands on a five-meter-high diving board during bachelor party high-jinks, Woomio co-founders Zeth Edwarsen and Torsten Bjorn Petersen, are well-known for tackling challenges head-on. Ten years after founding Woomio and building the platform into the powerhouse platform for influencer marketers in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway, the pair have joined forces with Europe’s #1 influencer marketing platform, Kolsquare. As economic headwinds, deeper data analytics and influencer professionalisation drive marketers in Northern Europe to rethink their approach to influencer marketing, Edwarsen and Petersen explain why combining Woomio and Kolsquare will deliver greater influencer marketing success for their clients.

As early movers in the Influencer Marketing industry, what was the impetus for founding Woomio in 2014?

Torsten Bjorn Petersen: Back then, in the Nordics, they were bloggers, not influencers. I wanted people to talk about products in a more authentic way. If a brand says, “This is the best product,” everyone knows there’s bias, which invalidates the message. But if someone you trust talks about the product, it feels credible.

Zeth Edwarsen: We started Woomio, which was inspired partly by U.S. platforms like rewardStyle and LIKEtoKNOWit (now LTK). Initially, we thought anyone could use our platform, but it soon became clear that influencers were the key users. When we launched, we had our first sale within three minutes, thanks to an influencer’s post.

How has the influencer marketing industry evolved in the Nordic market during that time?

Zeth Edwarsen: Things materialise faster here because the communities are smaller and more interconnected. However, influencer marketing is still ambiguous unless you have the right skills. There is a disconnect between brands and agencies. For instance, terms like “nano” or “macro-influencer” are based on the number of followers, but now everyone agrees that success in influencer marketing is not just about follower count; that the strategy is not about how many followers but how many of the target audience you’re reaching.

You might have someone with 500,000 followers who doesn’t reach the right audience, while someone with 10,000 followers does. So it becomes about what we call “target audience impressions.” It’s not widely recognised yet, but it should be.

Pure player agencies have built their entire model on driving so-called “free publicity”, but they are choosing influencers to work with based on the payment the influencer asks for and not necessarily what the brand needs. This leads to influencer marketing having a bad ROI, because agencies are not optimising the cost of the influencer through audience targeting.

We’ve found that these are difficult conversations to have because brands have traditionally put a lot of trust in agencies. We are at a point now where the agency does not necessarily understand that they are the ones standing in the way of successfully scaling influencer strategies.

Are brands in the Nordics moving towards more internalisation of influencer marketing?

Zeth Edwarsen: We saw this in 2021/22, but in 2023/24 we’ve seen the market take a step back due to the economic situation. Brands are scaling down on influencers in order to maintain Google and Facebook ads. The influencer marketing industry often overlooks the potential to negotiate prices with influencers, which is a significant advantage. However, without scaling efforts to include a sufficient number of influencers, the operational costs become prohibitive. Many brands facing resource constraints have downscaled their influencer marketing, delegating minimal time to it while managing other tasks. This often leads to reliance on quick marketplace solutions that prioritise speed over data-driven strategies, compromising campaign effectiveness. The economic challenges of recent years have pushed the industry toward less mature approaches, focusing on immediate execution rather than long-term impact and quality.

What do Woomio clients stand to gain from the merger with Kolsquare?

Torsten Bjorn Petersen: Kolsquare has several features that Woomio doesn’t, but which our clients want, such as Social Listening, Audience Overlap and API access. The double-sided search and discovery function which allows users to search either according to influencer or to content is also really powerful. Woomio has deep expertise in the reporting functions which Kolsquare will draw a lot of benefit from, so both Woomio and Kolsquare clients will be getting the best of both platforms.

It’s also worth noting that as the influencer marketing industry — not just in the Nordics, but generally — becomes more fragmented, the space will benefit from its key players joining forces and aligning efforts. This is especially true for tech platforms like Kolsquare and Woomio, where ever-improving data analysis capabilities hold the promise of delivering greater success for brands. By combining our technical and market expertise, we will be able to build valuable new features much faster, which will benefit our clients.

**As a B-Corp, Kolsquare’s raison d’être is to wield the power of #influenceforgood; how does this fit with Woomio’s culture?**

Torsten Bjorn Petersen: Since 2019, ethical guidelines and laws governing influencer marketing have become standard in the Nordics, with regulations now in their third iteration. The ethics that Kolsquare promotes align with this framework. Features such as influencer certification filters are particularly valuable for educating brands and professionalising the industry. From Woomio’s beginning, we sought to address marketing biases, focusing on genuine ambassadorial relationships to promote genuinely great products. This approach eliminates ineffective marketing and fosters a more sustainable, impactful ecosystem. Our shared mission with Kolsquare emphasises using influencer marketing as a force for good, reducing overconsumption and promoting authenticity, values integral to creating a better world.

About Kolsquare

Kolsquare is Europe’s leading Influencer Marketing platform, offering a data-driven solution that empowers brands to scale their KOL (Key Opinion Leader) marketing strategies through authentic partnerships with top creators.

Kolsquare’s advanced technology helps marketing professionals seamlessly identify the best content creators by filtering their content and audience, while also enabling them to build, manage, and optimize campaigns from start to finish. This includes measuring results and benchmarking performance against competitors.

With a thriving global community of influencer marketing experts, Kolsquare serves hundreds of customers—including Coca-Cola, Netflix, Sony Music, Publicis, Sézane, Sephora, Lush, and Hermès—by leveraging the latest Big Data, AI, and Machine Learning technologies. Our platform taps into an extensive network of KOLs with more than 5,000 followers across 180 countries on Instagram, TikTok, X (Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat.

As a Certified B Corporation, Kolsquare leads the way in promoting Responsible Influence, championing transparency, ethical practices, and meaningful collaborations that inspire positive change.

Since October 2024, Kolsquare has become part of the Team.Blue group, one of the largest private tech companies in Europe, and a leading digital enabler for businesses and entrepreneurs across Europe. Team.Blue brings together over 60 successful brands in web hosting, domains, e-commerce, online compliance, lead generation, application solutions, and social media.