The social media tech start-up backed by Qantas and Fairfax Media director Todd Sampson has revealed plans to list on the Australian Stock Exchange by mid-  May.
Visual Amplifiers, also known as Vamp, with investment bank Moelis as its adviser, is seeking to capitalise on growing demand from advertising agencies and high-profile consumer brands to connect with Instagram "influencers".
Moelis managing director Ben Wong and Vamp's executive team led by co-founder Ben McGrath will embark on an investor roadshow throughout Australia and Asia over the next few weeks as part of a plan to raise $15 million in the initial public offering. 
Tech incubator Digital4ge expects to hold a 43 per cent stake in Vamp post-IPO with the start-up hoping to gain a market value of around $45 million.
Mr Sampson, the non-executive chairman of advertising agency Leo Burnett, signed on a director of Vamp in   March and said he would invest some of his own money in the company given his enthusiasm for a product that disrupts the traditional advertising model.
  Social influencers  
Vamp works as a link among 700 "social influencers" on its books and clients such as Uniqlo, eBay and Samsung by offering services that include talent recruitment, product delivery and payments through to reporting, analytics and optimisation.
The company will initially target Australia, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia and hopes to lodge its prospectus with the ASX this week.
Part of the proceeds will be used to open an office in Singapore where Vamp said there is strong interest from brands in connecting with the company.
Mr McGrath told Fairfax Media it was the right time to seek fresh funds as the company looks to tap into the fast growing world of social media.
"There is a multibillion-dollar opportunity emerging and we are in a fantastic place to capture that," said Mr McGrath. "There's huge potential and we would like to own the south-east Asian market."
He expects a strong response from investors given the shift in advertising dollars to digital and the trajectory of growth in social media spending which is on track to double to 20 per cent of total digital spend by 2017 from 10 per cent five years ago.
Last year, Brand Data estimated Australia's top six bloggers now have a larger combined audience than the highest-selling magazine, newspaper and TV program collectively.
While Vamp's relationship with its 700 Instagram influencers is currently on an invite-only basis, the company plans to open up its platform publicly by late   April allowing budding social media trendsetters to sign up with their services.
While Instagram remains the focus for the start-up, Mr McGrath said it can be adapted to other media such as Facebook, Pinterest or Youtube in the future.
"We have designed it to be future proofed and we work in partnership with all of the big social media channels. If you think about Instagram, it relies on users and brands and agencies to create content and they like us because we are able to get great content on the Instagram feed."
Instagram has ruffled feathers in the social media world by proposing to implement an algorithm in the next few months which sorts image feeds by the most relevant or interesting photos rather than by dateline. But from Vamp's perspective the mooted change could help to boost its offering.
Digital4ge also helped to spark the IPO of Reffind, a human resources start-up that successfully listed on the ASX last year.