The latest in our Why We Launched It series. This week we talk to Paul Silver, who was previously at MiQ for thirteen years in a series of senior roles.
Why did you launch Volery, and what gap in creator marketing made you think it needed a media company rather than another agency?
At MiQ we looked at acquisitions to get into Creator. Every company we met was essentially an agency of some kind. None of them were built for the media community, which meant three things were missing.
The first is intelligence. Creators hold a huge amount of insight that few are harnessing. We’re building a knowledge graph (called Flyte Graph) that connects creators, the content they make and the outcomes they drive. I feel creators have become the cultural anchor for brand comms; it becomes an input for all media planning, not just the creator line.
The second is workflow. I know how media buyers work. I wanted a business built around those teams, and also around the adtech partners they already use. Buyers should be able to plan creator, book it on a CPM, sign one contract instead of chasing fifty creator invoices, activate through tools they use every day, and see the results in the same report as the rest of the plan. I believe if you make it that easy to transact, the budget would will follow.
The third is results. Most creator companies either work from a small pool of talent or have no skin in the game on outcomes. Buying teams need a currency they recognise, can stand behind, and can report on consistently with everything else they buy. So we guarantee reach and delivery across any set of creators, and Amplification runs strictly on an outcome model. The model and the technology are what set us apart. Either that or I’ll be broke very soon.
Your pitch is that creator should be “bought like media.” What changes for a brand when it buys creator through Volery with audience and attention as the unit, instead of the usual campaign-by-campaign influencer booking?
It forces you past a simple search on a marketplace or creator database. Someone asked us recently, “Can’t Claude just pick creators for me?” Yes, it can. But how do you know they’re the right ones?
We have an agentic layer doing a lot of the work. Who doesn’t? What matters is what sits behind it: the harnesses and evaluation criteria we’ve built, and an understanding of how price relates to outcome. That’s where the selection actually gets made.
Bring that kind of accountability to the channel (and I don’t mean the TikTok affiliate space) and brands and agencies can move more spend into it. Everyone accepts that creators drive attention, engagement and real changes in behaviour. Yet creator is still treated as a talent roster, booked one person at a time, because nobody has approached it the way an agency would.
I spent the first part of my career in agencies, including the VivaKi team many moons ago, and MiQ was and still is completely agency-focused. I think that gives me an unfair advantage here.
You give clients a forecast before they commit and say you’re accountable for results. How do you build those forecasts, and what does accountability look like if a campaign misses?
We forecast the way a media planner would, not a talent agent. Follower counts tell you very little. What matters is how a creator’s audience turns into delivered impressions: who actually sees the content, in which market, and at what rate. We score every creator against the brief on audience fit, content and past delivery. Every campaign we run feeds back into the model, so the forecasts get sharper each time.
Accountability means the risk sits with us. On creator media, we agree a reach and CPM floor across the whole selection up front. If a campaign is trending below it, we fix it at our cost: more posts, more creators, more amplification, until we hit the number. If it overdelivers, that’s upside to be shared appropriately. On Amplification, we’re paid on outcomes, so if it doesn’t perform, we don’t get paid. That’s the deal buyers already understand from guaranteed media, and it’s the only way creators get a permanent line in the plan.
Why did you choose to enter the creator media market now, and what shifts in platforms, budgets, or audience behaviour convinced you the timing was right?
First, it’s worth noting the story. Over two years, we reviewed an acquisition opportunity at MiQ. An outcomes and affiliate business. During DD, we noted that TikTok accounted for about 70% of all conversion volume across quite a range of merchant verticals. This for me was a lightbulb moment. Creators had the potential to not only engage audiences but drive purchase behaviour.
Then four things lined up at once.
The platforms started to build the plumbing. Partnership Ads on Meta and Spark Ads on TikTok meant creator content ran as paid media, on the creator’s own handle, with the same targeting and reporting buyers use for everything else. A few years ago, creator results lived in screenshots and spreadsheets. Now they can sit in the same report as the rest of the plan. That changes who can buy it.
The budgets are following. Creator spend is starting to move out of PR and brand partnership budgets and into media budgets, and the big holding companies are already treating it that way. Once money comes from the media line, it brings media expectations with it: forecasts, guarantees, a currency people trust. Most creator businesses aren’t built to meet those expectations. That’s the gap I think for someone with my background.
And audiences have already moved. People spend their time with creators; they trust them more than brand channels, and a lot of them now use TikTok and Instagram the way they used to use search. And brands know this. What’s been missing is a way to buy into it at scale without taking on all the risk.
The last piece is technology. Analysing thousands of creator videos (who’s on screen, what’s said, whether the product shows up, how the audience responds) used to be too expensive to do at scale. With AI, we can do it at scale and connect it to outcomes and do so as a challenger who’s bootsrapping. That’s what makes a media company in this space possible now, rather than another agency.
Why choose Dubai as HQ?
Dubai is where we started and it’s a major hub for us. The region moves fast, brands are willing to try new formats, and creators are central to how people here discover and buy. Live commerce is about to take off on the major platforms, and our Loft Studio in Dubai is ready for it, so we can host and produce live shows locally from day one.
But Dubai is one of several hubs, and we’re planning to open the others quickly. The UK already has commercial momentum. We’re looking at Miami next year as our entry into the US. We have partnerships being activated soon across much of EMEA, Canada, and scope to launch into LATAM. But clearly it’s a case of walk before you run!
You promise creator-produced content that is “quality-assured end to end.” How do you keep native creator authenticity while holding the consistency and quality that big brands expect
You have to separate what needs to be consistent from what shouldn’t be. Brand safety, claims, product visibility, the call to action and disclosure are non-negotiable. How the creator tells the story is theirs, and it’s why they have strong communities in the first place. Start over-scripting a creator to sound like an ad, and you’re just paying creator prices for shit creative.
Most of the quality work happens before anything is filmed. We profile creators on what they’re like, not just how big they are: aspirational, relatable, expert, and so on. That goes far beyond how most tools index creators, and aligning to brand archetypes is key. A creator who naturally talks about your category doesn’t need to be forced into it.
Then every asset is checked before it goes live. We automate the checks and put human QA on top. Each video gets broken down: how long the product is on screen, whether the creator is on camera, whether the CTA actually lands in what’s said rather than just in a text overlay. Brands get consistency they can measure, and creators keep the voice that made them worth booking.
