The ROI of Real: Measuring What Matters in Creator-Led Marketing

For too long, creator marketing has been judged by the wrong scorecard. Follower counts. Vanity metrics. Reach that looks impressive in a deck but tells you nothing about whether anyone actually paid attention. Our head of brand and partnerships, Rachael Webb, wrote for AdNews about why that approach is no longer good enough, and what serious measurement actually looks like.

The argument is straightforward but the industry has been slow to catch up: influence is no longer about presence, it is about proof. That means looking beyond impressions to the metrics that reflect genuine attention, average watch time, hook rate, hold rate. It means understanding that creator content does not end when a campaign wraps. The best work gets repurposed across paid, owned and earned channels, turning a single piece of creative into infrastructure. And it means taking cultural traction seriously, even when it is harder to quantify. Unaided brand mentions and branded search lifts are signals that something has genuinely landed, and no CPM can put a number on that.

What Rachael is making the case for is a more complete model of ROI, one that blends brand lift with performance data and creative longevity. Creator marketing has earned its place in the serious part of the media mix. The measurement frameworks need to catch up. Brands still running campaign-by-campaign with no system connecting creative inputs to business outcomes are leaving real value on the table.

This is the work we care about. Not just doing creator marketing, but doing it in a way that compounds. Read the full piece over on AdNews here.