The Node has established itself in influencer marketing by tackling the 60% commission rates and lack of transparency that have long plagued creator partnerships. Founded in 2021 by Rémy Chapot, the company has doubled its revenue each year while maintaining a steadfast commitment to fair representation for creators and honest pricing for brands.

“Influencer marketing made better,” says Rémy when asked for the tagline that represents his company’s mission. This straightforward motto encapsulates The Node’s approach to serving creators and brands in a more equitable ecosystem, whether through its agency services or recently acquired technology platform, Matchmade.

The Node functions as a dual-focused company: an agency representing creators with fair commission rates and a consulting arm providing transparent influencer marketing services to brands. The company now represents between 35 and 40 French-speaking creators across Twitch, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat, while also advising major brands such as HelloFresh, Intel, and Herman Miller on their influencer marketing strategies.

“We made it very clear with them that we could provide the same level of service they were used to in the past, but with maybe half the price they were getting charged by the other agencies,” Rémy explains.

The key to both pillars is transparency about commission rates and fees. For creators, The Node charges significantly less than the industry norm of 30-60%, while for brands, the commission ranges between 10% and 20%, depending on the volume.

“We have a global understanding of the best creators at the best places, at the best rates,” Rémy explains. The agency’s team of 14 professionals prioritizes client expectations over commission earnings, refusing to repeatedly promote the same roster of creators simply to maximize profits.

This approach also extends to The Node’s financial model. “We are self-funded, so we don’t rely on any external investors,” Rémy says. “We get to choose what we want to accept and which risks we want to take in terms of commission to make a campaign successful and a client pleased.”

The Matchmade Acquisition: A Strategic Revival

When Matchmade, an established influencer marketing platform that connected YouTube content creators with brands through its database and matchmaking technology, filed for bankruptcy, Rémy saw a perfect opportunity. 

“We had a thought of building our own structure like Matchmade that we used to work with before they went bankrupt,” he explains. “And then we saw the opportunity when they announced the bankruptcy and the filing for potential candidates.”

The acquisition was strategically calculated for two primary reasons. First, it gave The Node access to Matchmade’s extensive database of “several millions of YouTube channels which are daily tracked into the platform,” providing detailed data on how sponsored content performs compared to non-sponsored content, demographics, geographical information, keywords, and more.

“This is helping us in our daily work to find influencers for our clients,” Rémy says. “That was the first reason why we did it.”

Second, the acquisition allowed The Node to leverage Matchmade’s established reputation in the industry. “Matchmade had been operating for several years, so this helped us acquire the client database that we’ve been reaching out to,” Rémy explains. This has enabled The Node to showcase their vision for the platform’s revival to potential clients who were already familiar with its capabilities.

Rather than maintaining Matchmade as a standalone service with its original feature set, Rémy envisions a transformation that aligns with The Node’s broader mission of transparency. “Matchmade actually is feeding our bigger product that we are developing at The Node,” he says. “The long-term goal is to have something bigger than Matchmade at The Node, potentially leaving the Matchmade brand outside at some point.”

One key improvement will be expanding beyond Matchmade’s original YouTube focus to include livestreaming platforms, particularly Twitch, where The Node has seen “really crazy or very high engagement rates compared to YouTube.” Rémy envisions a platform where brands can easily connect with creators based on specific performance metrics, with automated matchmaking and campaign deployment.

Results-Focused Campaigns

As Rémy notes, The Node’s approach to influencer marketing is particularly effective for performance marketing campaigns, where results are measured not just in views or impressions, but in concrete metrics such as new user acquisition or software installations.

“Most of the clients that we support are all data-oriented,” he explains. “The campaigns that we run are not very easy, let’s say awareness campaigns where you just book the biggest creator, you reduce the fee, and make sure that you hit millions of views. What we do with Opera GX and others is performance marketing campaigns.” In these arrangements, The Node knows precisely what they pay creators in relation to the new users or software installs generated.

This measurement-focused methodology is exemplified by a recent campaign for Scopely, the mobile publisher behind games like “Monopoly Go!” and “Marvel Strike Force.” The Node orchestrated the first-ever localized campaign in France for “Marvel Strike Force’s” update, coinciding with the “Thunderbolts*” movie release.

“We onboarded about 60 creators in total which were either doing one thing, so YouTube or Twitch or some of them were doing two at the same time,” Rémy details. For the Twitch portion, what made the campaign particularly effective was their performance-based compensation structure. Creators received a competitive base fee with additional incentives based on the number of new users they brought to the game.

The campaign was fully integrated with Scopely’s tracking systems. “We were completely integrated within Scopely’s mobile measurement partner, Adjust, allowing us to track in real time the number of conversions and in-game events, like having a player reach a certain level in-game or having a player spend some money in-game,” Rémy explains. The results? A 22-23% conversion rate from clicks to installs and strong retention numbers.

Growth and Vision

Looking to the latter half of 2025, which Rémy describes as “key” for The Node’s growth, the company has practical plans for expansion. Having doubled revenue every year since its founding, The Node aims to expand both its talent roster and geographical reach.

“We’ve already laid down some plans to recruit new internal staff, but also creators in the coming months,” Rémy explains. “The goal for us is to work on new clients that we are already developing to scale the business out of Europe, potentially the Americas and so on, as we are already doing remotely. The goal would be to have physical teams in new markets to develop and use the same blueprint as the one that we used at the initial start of The Node in France.”

Rémy sees challenges ahead for traditional SaaS platforms in the influencer marketing space but believes human expertise will remain essential. “With the rise of AI, I believe that the pure SaaS players are likely to disappear, or at least some of them will definitely lose heavy amounts of business because an AI can already summarize, regroup, and make curations,” he observes.

Despite the emphasis on technology, Rémy maintains that personal expertise remains irreplaceable. “No AI or SaaS platform can replace the role of an agency if the work is done well and is competitive,” he asserts. “Some people might go for the automatic and AI stuff, but most will want expertise and real insight adapted to their precise needs.”