The ROI Squeeze

A post on X¹ from a content creator has generated conversation from fellow creators, managers, and influencer marketers discussing the current state of advertising with creator sponsorships.

Many folks on the industry side point to ROI issues and a strategic report by IAB² confirms this as the top challenge with creator marketing measurement. There’s a massive gap that has existed between what happened during the sponsored stream/video and direct attribution measurement. The industry, until recently, hasn't been able to measure the video itself.

Making sense of the value of what exactly a brand spent money on has been nebulous. A guessing game that leans on which creators got the most views and engagement. Brands default to view counts and engagement rates because that's been the easy thing to track. That’s being results-oriented without understanding how it happened. A creator who got 500k views and generated zero recall for the brand looked identical in the spreadsheet to one who drove genuine brand affinity. So brands recycle whoever has the biggest numbers, and that’s the strategy. Rinse and repeat by throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. Eventually, brands get tapped out from this fruitless exercise.

There are a number of critical questions that, when answered, illuminate the impact of an influencer campaign. How was the brand presented? What did viewers see, hear, and feel from the video that made it a success or failure? Did the creator talk about the brand organically before the partnership? Did they talk about the brand after? These insights support the top goal for brands in creator marketing - building brand awareness (according to IAB’s report, with driving sales ranked 4th). No wonder ROI is challenging to measure when the metric doesn’t satisfy the campaign’s primary objective. 

Authenticity is still everything. When pitching brands, prove you’re already a fan. Share clips of organic content from your stream (they actually may want to pay you to post it so they can boost it). Tell your manager which brands you’d love to work with. Brands want long-term partnerships with genuine brand loyalists, so build a relationship with a few key brands rather than going wide with many brands.

Influencer marketing is booming. Ad spend on creators has more than doubled since 2021 with $43.9 billion projected for 2026, according to IAB’s report. Advertising inside of video is certainly not going away, but the uncertainty around its value is. We can quantify the experience and use that understanding as a feedback loop to improve CTAs, pick creators that are a stronger fit, surface the truly valuable content that is ripe for amplification. Precise measurement is redefining what success and failure look like. Literally.

What's happening is a measurement problem that creators are facing the brunt of. The good news is that the industry knows it. Spend is still climbing, brands still want what creators offer, and technology like Rivr³ is enabling brands to know what actually happens inside a video. The conversation is evolving from "did it work?" to "here's exactly how it worked, and here's how we do it better next time." Better campaigns with the right creators make the industry fruitful for both sides.