Interview with AhaCreator's Peng Shan at Qianfeng Awards: Turning Influencer Marketing into a Long-Term Global Growth Infrastructure for Brands

【Ebrun Original】Peng Shan is co-founder and CGO of AhaCreator. With over a decade of experience in marketing, e-commerce, cross-border business growth and operations management, she previously worked at Pinduoduo and TEMU; she has led teams of over 200 people, maintained long-term collaborations with thousands of brands and tens of thousands of merchants, and worked across traffic, influencer marketing, supply and supply chains. Recently, during the 2026 Qianfeng Awards interview, Ebrun Think Tank spoke with Peng Shan about 'the modal evolution driven by AI and going global.'

Ebrun: This year's Qianfeng Awards takes 'the modal evolution driven by AI and going global' as its core theme. In the context of AI-powered overseas influencer marketing, how do you understand this round of industry modal evolution jointly driven by AI and globalization? What is AhaCreator's positioning and business model?

Peng Shan: In the past, every time a brand entered one more country or worked with one more batch of influencers, it had to add people for sourcing, communication and follow-up. AI connects these repetitive execution tasks, allowing teams to advance more collaborations simultaneously. In the AI era, what is hard to replace is genuine human-to-human communication. What truly penetrates users' minds is real people explaining products in real scenarios: who is suited to speak, and how to speak credibly, is something brands and creators must do well together.

AhaCreator is an AI-powered two-sided marketplace for overseas influencer marketing. On one side are brands that want to continuously produce high-quality content with suitable influencers and conduct scaled collaborations at lower cost; on the other side are creators who want suitable orders, reasonable compensation and reliable settlement. Brands submit requirements, confirm selections and quotes; creators produce and publish content as agreed; the platform connects matching, communication, delivery and settlement, and charges based on agreed content delivery and usage rights.

Ebrun: Where is AI currently implemented in core business processes?

Peng Shan: After brands submit products and briefs, the platform first clarifies target audiences, usage scenarios and content requirements, then uses multimodal analysis of influencers' recent videos—visuals, copy, audience and engagement—to judge whether the product can naturally enter their content and whether the influencer meets project criteria.

Once selections are confirmed, the platform advances multilingual outreach, quote negotiation, order management, submission and revision follow-up, publishing management and data aggregation, with contracts and cross-border settlement also included in the same process. Content pre-review checks subtitles, spoken lines and visuals, pinpointing specific segments that do not comply with the brief.

Brands retain four key decision points: creating a campaign, confirming influencers and quotes, reviewing content, and viewing data reviews.

Ebrun: Could you share a few representative 'AI value chain' cases?

Peng Shan: A well-known smart hardware brand needed to complete 1,000 UGC pieces across 19 countries on five continents. Because product unit prices are high, it required influencers to already own the device, avoiding the wait for sample shipping and cross-border logistics. AhaCreator completed screening and matching of about 300–400 influencers within 48 hours, with a screening pass rate of over 70%; each influencer delivered 3–4 pieces of content, and all 1,000 deliverables were completed in less than a month. Without additional paid amplification, the project's average CPM was below $4, against an original target of about $10.

Another case is an AI video generation product from a leading major company, which already spends over $500,000 monthly on AhaCreator collaborations; some trend-chasing projects can go from idea to publication within 3–5 days. When clients have new features or trending needs, they can reference influencers' past content performance, delivery speed and collaboration records to quickly find people and advance production.

A third case is SeaArt, whose influencer screening, outreach and order-by-order follow-up used to be scattered across spreadsheets, emails and direct messages. After using AhaCreator, the system handles initial profile screening, preliminary outreach, contract information organization and progress follow-up, so the team can spend more time on brand tone, content strategy and test iteration.

Ebrun: How do AhaCreator's two flywheels turn? How do they form a long-term moat?

Peng Shan: The first layer is the supply-demand network. Real brand orders with budgets attract suitable influencers; reasonable compensation, reliable settlement and subsequent collaboration opportunities keep influencers willing to participate continuously. The more influencers who can respond and deliver in specific markets and categories, the easier it is for brands to launch the next round of collaboration, and new orders bring in more suitable supply.

The second layer is transaction data. Who a brand selected and why it rejected others, at what price and licensing terms influencers are willing to accept orders, how many times content was revised, whether it was delivered on time and how it performed—all become the basis for the next matching, pricing and risk judgment. Subsequent orders then test these judgments, and new feedback continues to improve the next round of collaboration.

Five layers of moat: first, complex workflows, accumulating experience in advancing orders to delivery and handling changes and exceptions; second, transaction data, using real deals, revisions and fulfillment records to improve matching, pricing and risk judgment; third, transaction network and supply density, gradually accumulating influencers who can respond and deliver in specific countries, categories and budgets.

Fourth, transaction habits, as brands and influencers can reuse familiar collaboration processes, selections, requirements and review records; fifth, cross-platform capability, accumulating collaboration and execution experience across different channels so brands can combine channels and manage projects uniformly.

Ebrun: What do AhaCreator's collaborations with Feishu, BlueFocus and MiningLamp mean for the business?

Peng Shan: Through Feishu integration, brands can advance selection, quoting, content review and progress management within their daily collaboration environment. Deep collaboration with BlueFocus brings client demands from different industries and global marketing experience; the strategic partnership with MiningLamp adds data and insight capabilities.

Ebrun: In terms of overseas layout, how does AhaCreator localize?

Peng Shan: Currently the influencer network covers more than 140 countries and regions, as well as platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X and LinkedIn. Localization must be grounded in specific projects: whether influencers can reach target audiences, whether there are real usage scenarios, whether content expression suits local audiences, and whether sample shipping and delivery conditions can be met.

Multilingual communication must also be arranged according to specific contacts' expression habits, time zones and collaboration stages.

Ebrun: How do you view the competitive landscape over the next two years?

Peng Shan: Over the next two years, industry competition will shift from 'who offers more features' to 'who can help brands continuously complete global marketing delivery.' Foundation model capabilities are becoming widespread, and single-point features are easy to copy; what truly takes time to accumulate is an active supply-demand network and fulfillment trust for complex projects. Currently we have solved the 'how to implement' problem; in the next stage we plan to move toward 'marketing intelligence,' letting accumulated feedback support brands in 'how to judge'—which market a new product should test first, and what type of content is worth additional investment. We will continue to improve AI workflows and multimodal capabilities and deepen ecosystem collaboration. Technology helps scale execution, while experience helps understand complex needs; only by combining the two can scattered collaborations become reusable global growth capabilities for enterprises.

As an annual bellwether for the TO B sector, the '2026 8th Ebrun Industrial Internet Annual Conference and First Industrial Agent Conference' will be held in Beijing on November 20, 2026. The theme is 'the modal evolution driven by AI and going global,' focusing on in-depth discussion of frontier topics such as the implementation of industrial agents, value reconstruction of AI supply chains, data elements and the TOKEN economy, and the new ecosystem of industrial going global. The conference will bring together academic authorities, benchmark central SOEs, industry leaders, investment institutions and service ecosystem partners, gather core industry forces, unpack paths for industrial digital and intelligent transformation, and share frontier practical experience. It will also release the annual industrial internet report and benchmark cases, and hold a decision-makers' closed-door meeting and the 'Qianfeng Awards' ceremony.

This article was first published on the official website of Ebrun.