The Influencer Economy as an Emerging Monetization Strategy in Digital Business Ecosystems

Abstract

This study examines the influencer economy as an emerging monetization strategy within digital business ecosystems. Its purpose is to explain how social media influencers convert audience attention, trust, and parasocial relationships into revenue, which actors organize that conversion, and what the arrangement implies for firms, particularly small and medium enterprises in Indonesia. The method is a systematic literature review combined with conceptual synthesis. Peer reviewed studies on influencer marketing, platform ecosystems, and digital monetization were identified through structured database searches, screened against explicit inclusion criteria, and coded thematically, and publicly available industry data on the Indonesian digital market were used to contextualize the synthesis. The results show that influencer monetization operates through six interlocking mechanisms, namely sponsored content, affiliate commissions, proprietary brands and product lines, live commerce, platform revenue sharing, and virtual gifts, and that these mechanisms are coordinated by a layered cast of platforms, brands, agencies, and multi channel networks serving influencer tiers from nano to mega. The Indonesian context, marked by internet penetration above 80 percent and one of the largest social media audiences in the world, makes these mechanisms commercially significant while exposing participants to disclosure failures, follower fraud, and platform dependency. The novelty of this study lies in framing influencer monetization not as a promotional tactic but as an ecosystem level revenue architecture, and in deriving from that framing a staged strategy, moving from affiliate based entry through live commerce to owned audience assets, through which small and medium enterprises can participate without surrendering margin or control to intermediaries.