As brands pour billions of dollars into influencer marketing, the demands for new technology and data to measure effectiveness have increased dramatically. Clients no longer think of branded content and brand ambassadors as a talent model or public-relations budget—instead, it is a media buy that must map back to return on investment. With the maturation of this market, now come the comparisons to digital, TV and paid social.
Influencer marketing is now officially stealing market share from other mediums, and it must and will be judged by the same metrics. To standardize this comparison, there has already been the shift to media pricing on CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) and cost per view. Recaps for clients now consist of TV and digital terms like ad recall, brand lift, impressions delivered and frequency, but all of this is moot to a marketer if there’s no context or guidelines to define success.
