Payment delays to creators, opaque pricing structures, and limited campaign measurement tools are among the critical factors undermining relationships between brands and influencers in the creator economy. Word on the Block, founded in 2019 in New York by former finance professional Seth Girsky, is providing a technology platform designed to address these issues by championing transparency and accountability throughout the influencer marketing process.

“There’s a massive trust issue with creators and their agents. You see agencies that aren’t paying creators for six months representing massive brands,” says Seth. “We ensure our system knows exactly how much we owe creators from brands.”

Word on the Block emerged from Seth’s recognition that smaller creators offered untapped value for brands but lacked the infrastructure to operate effectively. “These creators are all mini-media companies, but they don’t know what they’re doing,” Seth explains. “They don’t know how to run an ad sales process. They don’t know how to have an accounts receivable department.” 

Even representation doesn’t necessarily solve these problems, as many agents are starting their own businesses from scratch and lack established systems themselves.

Meanwhile, brands face their own set of challenges. As Seth explains, those new to influencer marketing often lack the tools to discover appropriate creators, manage campaigns efficiently, and measure results accurately. This is especially true for companies without large budgets. 

“To make a $5,000 campaign work for a brand on their own, they have to invest $10,000 worth of tools and time just to figure it out,” Seth notes. “Getting rid of that cost is still one of the biggest problems we see and one of the biggest areas we’re trying to solve.”

Transparency and Systematic Workflow

Word on the Block addresses trust issues by creating a system where each step of the influencer marketing process is visible and accountable.

The company has built a two-sided platform with distinct interfaces for brands and creators. “We built a whole internal workflow tool that creators can access from their end,” Seth explains. “We tried to make these briefs really easy for creators to understand and then have all the requirements built into the brief.”

This systematic approach reduces the confusion and miscommunication that often plague creator campaigns. “Creators upload a script or a draft to the brief. The caption is part of the draft. All the pieces that are required are easily placed for the creators,” says Seth. Meanwhile, brands can review submissions, provide feedback, and track progress through their own dashboard.

The platform moves beyond traditional marketplace models by incorporating contracts, campaign-specific tracking codes, shipping information for product samples, and other operational elements that are typically managed through separate tools and manual processes.

Making Attribution and Analytics Accessible

One of the most persistent challenges in influencer marketing, according to Seth, has been measuring impact—understanding which creator partnerships actually drive results. Word on the Block’s analytics dashboard transforms this typically opaque area into a transparent, measurement-focused process.

“We’re trying to solve the attribution problem here,” Seth emphasizes. “We’re trying to make it really easy to understand exactly what’s going on.” The platform automatically tracks key metrics across posts, with flexibility to focus on either engagement metrics or conversion-oriented measurements depending on campaign goals.

“You have this performance dashboard with engagement rate, likes, views. We can do it for posts and engagement, as well as clicks and conversions,” Seth explains. The system also allows brands to view performance by individual creators or by content piece, providing multiple perspectives on campaign effectiveness.

Furthermore, the platform continues tracking metrics over time, capturing the long-term value that creator content often generates, particularly on platforms like YouTube. “It helps you understand what you get in the first 30 days, but also how much attention you continue to get, which is another piece we track and try to include in these reports,” notes Seth.

This approach to analytics directly counters one of the most common mistakes Seth sees in the industry: an overreliance on surface-level metrics. “Follower count for some reason was this golden metric that everyone loved. And it’s become basically meaningless,” he states.

Democratizing Access While Maintaining Profitability

Word on the Block’s approach to pricing reflects its mission to make professional influencer marketing infrastructure available to a broader range of businesses. Instead of requiring large upfront investment like enterprise platforms, Word on the Block offers free discovery services and charges brands only when they proceed with campaigns.

“Our cost of discovery is free because we will provide you a group of creators, and we’re not going to charge you unless you go forward,” Seth explains. “We try to be flexible in terms of working with brands who have $5,000 and looking to build brands that have hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

This model allows companies to explore influencer marketing with minimal upfront risk while still accessing quality infrastructure. The platform’s focus on efficiency also extends to the fee structure itself. “We take a cut, but it depends on a number of different things. We’re always focused on the net cost of the brand and making sure it’s negotiated to a CPM and a price point we think will give the brand a good chance of being successful,” says Seth.

Success Through Systematic Implementation

Word on the Block serves clients across various industries and stages of influencer marketing maturity. Bigelow Tea, a traditional brand with limited experience in creator partnerships, provides a compelling example of the platform’s impact.

“When we met with them at first, they had a few examples of influencer integrations they had done. They didn’t really know how to even measure if it was successful or not,” Seth recounts. “And they definitely didn’t have a process to continuously build an ongoing influencer campaign.” Word on the Block helped them develop a comprehensive strategy, including an anniversary campaign that generated measurable results.

Similarly, Bark, a parental controls company that started as a startup managing influencer marketing internally, shifted its approach after utilizing Word on the Block’s system. According to Seth, their perspective became: “Why are we wasting all our time with all this stuff when Word on the Block can make it so much easier for us?”

Morgan & Morgan, a nationwide legal firm, presents another success story. “We helped them go from 5k to 10k to hundreds of thousands of dollars in spend,” Seth notes, adding that the firm, which had traditionally focused on billboard-style advertising, found that Word on the Block’s approach to influencer marketing provided similar reach at a better value.

New Solutions for Creator Economy Challenges

Seth sees several emerging trends that will shape the future of influencer marketing, with pricing transparency being particularly important. He predicts a market correction in how creators are valued: “Influence is declining. I think the premium people are willing to pay for these bigger influencers is going to come down, while the value of these smaller influencers is going to come up.”

This reset would require a change in how both sides approach partnerships. For creators, especially smaller ones, Seth advises a strategic shift: “Smaller creators will find more opportunities, but they need to be willing to give a 50% discount for the first deal so that they could try to build a 12-month relationship with brands.” This longer-term perspective reflects the creator business model’s maturation from one-off deals to sustainable businesses.

Word on the Block is preparing for these changes by developing additional tools that further address trust and efficiency challenges. These include a free brand dashboard for tracking campaign performance regardless of platform and creator media kits that automatically integrate with their system. “We want to give this away to them and have it auto-apply to our deals,” Seth explains.

In an environment where misaligned incentives and inefficient processes have strained relationships, Word on the Block positions its technology as the foundation for rebuilding trust in the creator economy.

“We’re trying to do things the right way and provide as best an experience for as many people as possible,” Seth summarizes. “I’m hopeful and optimistic about both the brand and creator sides moving toward a healthier point.”