Latest / Influencer Advantage / Influencer Advantage on Why Brands Should Look Beyond Creator Engagement

Transcript

Influencer Advantage on Why Brands Should Look Beyond Creator Engagement · Influencer Advantage

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Have you ever liked a creator-sponsored post but, you know,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: bought absolutely nothing? Oh, yeah, definitely. All the time.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Right. I know I have. So welcome to today's Deep Dive.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Today we're pulling from some fascinating notes on a performance
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: marketing company called Influencer Advantage.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and our mission today is really to uncover how
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: the creator economy is radically changing, how it actually measures success.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Because judging a marketing campaign by, like, likes and views...
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: It's basically like a restaurant bragging about a huge line
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: out the door when literally nobody is buying any food.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: That is a perfect way to look at it.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: OK, let's unpack this. Why are brands still measuring that
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: empty line out the door?
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, because engagement just used to be the
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: easiest metric to grab, you know. But we all know
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: the era of vanity metrics is dead. Advanced marketers already
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: get that a bunch of fire emojis in a comment
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: section just do not pay the bills. Right.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Likes don't equal cash. Exactly.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Exactly. But what's really fascinating here is this sheer panic
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: at the corporate level because the budgets are moving so
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: much faster than the actual tracking technology. Oh, wow. Really?
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: How fast were you talking?
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Well, between 2025 and 2026, the average annual investment in
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: creator marketing jumped an astounding 171 percent. Wait, 171 percent
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: in a year?
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's massive.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: And according to Forbes, brands see roughly $ 5. 78 back for
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: every dollar spent on influencers.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: OK, that sounds pretty good, though.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: It does. But here's the catch. Nearly 30 percent of
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: them still don't formally track that return.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: But wait, let me just play devil's advocate for a
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: second here. Isn't top of funnel brand awareness still like
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: incredibly valuable?
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, for sure.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: It has a place.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Because even if someone doesn't buy the product today, millions
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: of people seeing a viral post has to translate to
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: future market share. You know, so if some brands are
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: putting over half their marketing budget into creators, how are
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: strict corporate finance teams still accepting vanity metrics? Why are
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: they panicking over immediate ROI?
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: Because when you're reallocating over half of your entire budget
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: away from traditional ads, chief financial officers simply cannot justify
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: that massive spend on just, you know, theoretical future market share.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Ah, I see. They need the hard numbers.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They need to see hard metrics today. Specifically, they're
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: looking at Customer acquisition cost and return on ad spend.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Which historically in the creator space was a total nightmare
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: to track.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Because of dark social.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Spot on. Dark social is when someone sees a TikTok,
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: texts the link to a friend. The friend opens a
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: new browser window way later and buys the product. Right.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: So the attribution link is just completely broken.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But companies like Influencer Advantage, they are engineering ways
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: around this blind spot at just a massive scale.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: And we're talking huge scale, right? Because they manage over
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: $ 850 million in annual ad spend.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and they activate like 75,000 monthly partnerships. So this
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: isn't just theory anymore.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: How are they actually doing that, though? Because I imagine
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: we've got to be past just throwing a generic promo
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: code in a YouTube description.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, totally. So they've built what their founder, James, calls
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: a creative strategy flywheel.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: A flywheel, okay.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's this great quote from him. He notes
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: that people trust people more than brands, but authenticity alone
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: is no longer enough. Right.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Authenticity doesn't guarantee a sale.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Exactly. So the flywheel actually solves that dark social tracking
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: problem by pulling paid amplification right into the mix.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Oh, so instead of just hoping an organic post gets clicks,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: they take the most engaging content and pump paid ad
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: dollars behind it.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: You got it. And once they convert that organic post
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: into a paid ad, they immediately get access to the
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: social media platform's underlying tracking pixels.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. So they get the multi-touch attribution models. They
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: aren't just guessing where the sale came from anymore.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: Right. They can actually trace your digital journey from watching
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: the video straight to completing the checkout. They can see
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: exactly which creator and which specific message converted the cheapest customer.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: So basically, testing is completely replacing guessing across the board.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The hard data feeds right back into their research,
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: so every new campaign starts smarter. And if we connect
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: this to the bigger picture, we're seeing this exact shift
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: across the entire industry. Right.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: This isn't happening in a vacuum.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: No, not at all. Sprout Social found that marketers now
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: lean heavily on hard website traffic over pure engagement.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Which makes sense. What about platform networks?
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Well, look at JRN. They use their network of over 700,000
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: verified creators just to test specific messaging against real sales outcomes.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Wow. 700,000.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And Aras recently spent over a million dollars testing
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: sponsorships and learned that long-term relationships matter far more than
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: just a single post engagement.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Because the more you look at the actual attribution models,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: the more you realize a post can do incredibly well
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: with views and likes and still fail to move a
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: single product.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Engagement is a great signal of trust, sure, but
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: it is no longer the scoreboard. The only scoreboard is revenue.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: So to our listeners, the next time you see a
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: wildly viral sponsored post pop up on your feed, remember
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: that without track sales, that brand might actually be losing money.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just a huge line outside a restaurant where
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: nobody is ordering dinner.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: An incredibly expensive line, too. Which leaves you with this
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: to chew on as the entire industry shifts to purely
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: performance-based data Will everyday creators be forced to act like
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: aggressive digital salespeople just to survive the algorithm sales funnel?