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There’s one big problem with proving influencer marketing ROI:
It’s messy.
Whereas Google and Meta give you a nice, clean number you can present to your leadership team, influencer marketing is more like a stack of layers, of which direct attribution is only one part.
Lots of brands only report that single figure, while ignoring everything else – content, awareness, full-funnel lift – that the channel delivers. So they assume influencer marketing just doesn’t work for them and pull the plug.
To avoid this happening to you, you need to find a better, more nuanced way to calculate, measure, and defend influencer ROI. Which is precisely what I’m gonna show you in this article…
In theory, calculating influencer marketing ROI is a cinch. Like any other channel, just use the formula: attributed revenue ÷ total campaign cost = ROI.
So if a brand runs an influencer campaign that generates $30,000 in attributed revenue against a total campaign cost of $10,000, they’re looking at an ROI of $3 for every $1 spent.
Easy, huh? Let’s pack it up and go home 👋
Actually, hold up a minute, because there’s a problem. The two elements of that formula – attributed revenue and total campaign cost – are often misunderstood, which makes the output flawed at best, useless at worst.
Let’s explain what they get wrong…
Here’s the thing:
With Meta ads, the only “cost” considered in ROI (or ROAS) calculations is ad spend. No production costs, no labor or agency fees.
Yet because influencer marketing bundles together content production, reach, and the all-important trust factor of using their face and name, the cost looks higher – which, naturally, makes the ROI look worse.
To be clear, I’m not saying you should ignore the true cost; that’s just lying to yourself. You should absolutely base your ROI figure off the full cost stack, which includes…
…but you need to make sure leadership understands that comparing raw influencer ROAS to Meta ROAS is apples to oranges.
(Also, remember that unlike social ads, the effects of influencer marketing compound. Content keeps earning for months, so a snapshot taken too early reads as failure when it’s really impatience.)
🤓 Pro tip: Modash makes it easier to accurately measure influencer marketing by automatically folding affiliate commissions into creator cost, so ROAS isn't flattered by an understated denominator.
Now let’s consider the problem with revenue-based ROI calculations.
Fact is, gross revenue-based ROAS overstates your actual return because it ignores discounts, returns, and margin.
This inflated figure might make your performance look better on paper. But realistically, as soon as leadership starts digging into the details, they’ll find you can’t back it up – and there goes your budget 💸
That’s why it’s in your best interests to run a more “honest” calculation using net revenue after discounts, refunds, and returns. And ideally also contribution margin.
In other words: the same $10k spend can look like 5X, 4X, or 2.4X ROI depending on what you count. And while the “smaller” figure isn’t as flattering, you’ll be able to defend it – which is what really matters.
Another stumbling block is that influencer marketing isn’t a single thing, which makes it hard to calculate one meaningful ROI figure.
For starters, most influencer programs combine multiple collaboration types, each with its own costs and definition of return. Affiliate collabs will typically look best because they deliver direct sales, while gifting often looks like sunk costs with no (financial) return. All of which means these different campaign types shouldn’t be judged in the same way.
And then, muddying the water further, there’s the fact that most brands run several – or all – of these campaign types simultaneously. Often with the same creator.
Understandably, all this confusion puts some marketers off the idea of reporting ROI as a single number. It’s just too much of a headache 🤯 But you should sink a couple ibuprofen and do it anyway, as influencer marketing consultant Andreea Moise (AKA the Hype Maven) explains:
Don’t prevent ROI from collapsing into a blended number, but actually aim to measure as blended as possible, since a lot of attribution will be missed and the performance of influencer marketing channels is always cumulative.
Still confused?
It all makes a lot more sense if you treat reporting as a two-part process:
To do this, you need to give each collab type a “job” – either content, revenue, or reach – then track the metric that matches that job. It might look something like this:
Now, let’s put some imaginary cost and return figures against those campaigns to crunch ourselves a blended ROI:
So, in total, we’re looking at $25,000 in total campaign cost vs $50,000 in attributable revenue/value, for a blended ROI of 2:1.
Man alive I haven’t done that much math in years 😅
Honestly, I get it:
Figuring out what results can and can’t be attributed to influencer marketing is hard work. Andreea says this causes most brands and marketers to search for the simplest solution.
The main issue is that brands don’t know how to consolidate or read fragmented data. That’s why most rely on direct attribution because it’s easier.
But this approach opens up a whole other can of worms. Because direct attribution only sees the bottom of the funnel, a single ROAS figure is always going to undercount the impact of a full-funnel channel like influencer marketing.
Let’s consider how this plays out in the real world.
Firstly, consider longevity. Like giant tortoises and Cliff Richard, influencer campaigns live longer than you think. Imagine you collab with a YouTube creator to promote a new product launch. The content is smart, funny, and authentic – it’s a hit, babyyyyyy. So much so that months down the line, with the launch date now a distant memory, the same video still keeps on driving traffic and sales.
Of course, if you stopped measuring a week after the content went live, you’d miss all the later impact from your ROI calculation.
Also, don’t discount the effects of “dark social”.
It might sound like something from The Matrix, but it’s actually about content being shared through private digital channels like DMs and WhatsApps, making it un-trackable and un-attributable by standard analytics tools.
For example, say a skincare creator shares a Reel about a brand’s latest moisturizer. A follower sees it, screenshots the product, and WhatsApps it to their bestie – who later Googles the brand, visits their website, and buys 10 tubs of it.
In an ideal world, you’d attribute those sales to influencer marketing, but analytics would probably peg it to organic search instead. Booooooo.
And then there’s the so-called “halo effect” to think about, whereby influencer activity also boosts performance across other channels. You can measure it through things like:
(Plot spoiler, I’ll dig into all of this in the next section 👇👇👇)
This is all stuff that would be missed by a single ROAS figure, thereby making influencer activity look way less effective.
Because not all influencer marketing ROI is directly attributable, measuring it requires a multilayered approach that captures all the different “outcomes” – the direct stuff, the indirect full-funnel lift, and the value of content and awareness.
First, here’s a quick snapshot of what each layer tells you (and what it misses)...
…and now let’s take a closer look:
Tracking links and promo codes give you the clearest evidence that your influencer program is working.
They work slightly differently:
Because they track direct sales, it’s easy to turn these results into a ROAS figure – just take the total (net) revenue generated from links and/or codes, then divide it by total campaign cost.
You can calculate this stuff manually in a spreadsheet. But, as you can likely imagine, it gets pretty unwieldy by the time you’re dealing with dozens of influencers and hundreds of sales.
That’s when you need an influencer tracking platform like Modash, which automatically ties revenue to individual influencers and calculates ROAS against creator cost.
Of course, there are a couple major limitations to link- and code-based tracking.
Firstly, it doesn’t account for any sales that didn’t stem from a link click or code submission. And secondly, it fails to measure any effects influencer marketing has higher up the funnel and how it interacts with other channels.
Directly attributable revenue accounts for a smaller proportion of influencer marketing ROI than you might imagine, as Andreea explains:
If you’re just relying on links and codes, roughly 50% – 60% goes untracked, especially if you don’t know how people buy or where.
So you need some other way to measure impact that never touches a code or link. Plus you want to consider how your influencer activity affects what happens higher up the funnel.
Fortunately, there are a few options.
For starters, look at how searches for your brand or product names correlate with influencer activity. If a creator just shared a banger TikTok that racked up hundreds of thousands of views, then you see a spike in branded search over the following week, it’s reasonable to attribute this to influencer marketing.
Or, if that’s not concrete enough, run a test over a short period (say 1 – 5 days) in which no changes are happening across other channels. No peaks or troughs in PPC spending; no new email marketing promos; no new Meta ad campaigns. Then ask all your influencers to post during that period and see what happens:
Additionally, if you’re working with unique landing pages or UTM links, this is your reminder to look beyond the last-click report in Google Analytics. The assisted conversion report in GA shows the different channels included on the path to conversion, so look out for the number of times influencer content appears.
And don’t overlook the value of post-purchase surveys, where you ask customers how they heard about you.
Include an option that says something like “Influencer/content creator” and track how many times it gets selected. Sure, it’s not 100% watertight, but it’ll help you pick up some of the impact that links and codes can’t track.
The content your influencer partners created for you has a very concrete cost. If they hadn’t created it, you’d have had to do it yourself, or paid an agency to do it for you.
This time and/or money saving should be factored into your influencer marketing ROI. And if your influencer content ends up getting used for whitelisting ads, you might even write off some or all of the influencer’s costs and “charge it” to your paid team instead.
It’s a lot easier to work this stuff out if you’ve got a comprehensive record of all the content your influencers have shared over a given period.
Doing this manually either requires creators to send you links and/or screenshots every time they post, or for you to do it. Oh, and then you have to file it away somewhere you’ll be able to find it again.
In short, it’s a serious pain.
That’s why you need a content tracking tool like Modash, which automatically gathers live influencer posts (even Stories) featuring your campaign hashtags, mentions, tags, and keywords – plus you can export the content for re-use.
Or you can activate our Event mode to capture all public content your influencers share over a given period, even if they forget to add the right keywords or tags.
And what about the benefit of all the organic exposure from your campaigns?
While less obvious than content production costs, there’s still a way to measure this: earned media value (EMV). In a nutshell, EMV puts a dollar figure against the impressions, views, and engagement your creators generate.
Think of it as: "What would it have cost to buy this exposure through paid ads?"
The good news is, Modash calculates EMV automatically on a per-campaign and per-post basis:
Plus you can customize the EMV multipliers for different platforms and actions (like views and comments) to reflect what matters most for your brand.
I Googled “influencer marketing roi” and it assured me that the channel delivers an average return of $5.20 – $5.78 for every $1 spent:
ChatGPT told me something similar.
So that’s put that to bed, right?
Well, not really. Fact is, cross-brand ROI/ROAS benchmarks are misleading because they’re based on different attribution models, verticals, and cost definitions. That’s why the only practical answer is to work out what counts as a good influencer marketing ROI number for you.
To do this, you need to consider three things, namely your:
For example, imagine a brand is generating an overall influencer marketing ROI of 3:1.
To work out whether that’s good, bad, or plain ugly, you’d compare against the factors above, like so:
So we’re no longer looking at an isolated ROI figure – we’ve got the context to tell us that the brand’s influencer program is in great shape.
Hopefully, by now, you’ve got a clear concept of how to meaningfully calculate influencer marketing ROI – so the next step is to discuss how to improve it 📈
Don’t feel bad if you’re currently relying 100% on direct-only attribution via links and/or codes – because so are lots of other brands.
However, this leaves you limited options for increasing ROI, because you’re ignoring the impact of everything other than what happens at the very bottom of the funnel.
As such, the first step on your journey to ROI glory is to adopt a more mature measurement approach.
Start analyzing metrics like direct traffic and branded search volume to better understand how your influencer program benefits the full marketing funnel. And look at assisted conversions in Google Analytics to see how customers interact with influencer content on their path to purchase.
Heading into 2026, three-fifths of influencer marketers planned to run more long-term partnerships, according to Modash’s latest influencer marketing trends survey.
On the flip side, just one in seven were planning to use fewer long-term collabs.
This makes sense from an ROI perspective because the longer you keep working with a given creator, the more authentic and trustworthy they seem – and customers aren’t gonna buy if your influencer content feels fake.
And anyway, if a creator is consistently generating a strong return, why wouldn’t you want to keep working with them?
While ROI isn’t all about what happens at the bottom of the funnel, there’s no getting away from the fact that offering performance-based payments are often the most effective way to boost creator performance.
After all, if an influencer knows they’ll earn a cut of every sale they generate, they’ll be more personally invested in the success of your campaign than if they’re just getting a flat fee.
Admittedly, tracking commissions across any more than 5 or so creators can be seriously time-consuming if you’re doing it manually. Especially if you’re running multiple commission tiers.
Modash saves a whole heap of time here with built-in performance-based payments – just set a creator’s commission tier and we calculate everything else for you (on net sales rather than gross).
Not only that, but you can send payment links, automatically collect invoices, and pay creators in 180+ countries and 36 currencies using Modash Pay.
One of the most reliable ways to land yourself with a permanently low ROI is to prioritize influencers with high follower counts.
Because not only will they likely be expensive – thereby increasing your costs – but there are no guarantees their followers will actually be interested in your brand and product. They might not even be real people 🤖
So if you want to deliver a meaningful return rather than empty vanity metrics, you’ll choose audience fit over audience size every time. Far better to reach 10,000 people who perfectly match your ICP than 100,000 who don’t.
But how do you find influencers who match your audience and brand?
Well, you can do the work yourself using ChatGPT or Google or the built-in tools on social platforms (for more on this, check out 14 Ways To Find Micro Influencers (Free & Paid Methods!)). Just bear in mind that none of the manual options are particularly scalable.
Alternatively, save time and get better results with Modash’s AI creator search. Describe what you're looking for using natural language, then leave Modash to analyze bios, captions, and visuals across tens of millions of public profiles on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Seconds later, BADA BING BADA BOOM, you’ve got a ton of brand-fit creator profiles to reach out to 😎
Repurposing influencer content is a smart way to boost your ROI.
Provided you get the creator’s permission, you can add their content to product pages, share it on your social channels, and promote it in ad campaigns. The more you use the assets they create, the more bang you’re getting for your buck.
Of course, this process gets a whole lot easier if you’ve got a tool like Modash to collect all that live creator content for you.
You can even filter the results by keyword or creator to track down the most relevant posts:
If you approach influencer marketing ROI with the aim of calculating a single, shiny figure that makes you and your leadership team feel all cozy and warm – well, unfortunately, you’re gonna be disappointed.
Because that single figure will never be able to adequately showcase the full impact of influencer marketing.
Rather, your goal should be to build a layered case that your finance team can't argue with, encompassing…
…all tracked consistently over time.
While this sort of nuanced ROI reporting is a whole lot tougher than plucking an attractive-sounding number from your Meta Ads dashboard, it’s also a whole lot more meaningful.
And don’t forget: Modash can do a lot of the heavy lifting by pulling the direct and content-value layers into one place, so you don’t have to worry about consolidating promo codes and link clicks in a spreadsheet or manually screenshot-ing live influencer content.
👉 To see for yourself, start your 14-day free Modash trial!
With the formula ROI = attributed revenue ÷ total campaign cost. The actual calculation is the simple part – what’s more difficult is working out how much (net) revenue can be attributed to influencer marketing, and what to include in campaign costs.
A huge amount of revenue from influencer marketing can’t be measured via directly attributable methods like link clicks and code redemptions (influencer marketing consultant Andreea Moise says roughly 50% – 60% goes untracked). However, you can still measure at least some of the impact through metrics like:
EMV also puts a dollar amount against the impressions, views, and engagement your creators generate – and don’t overlook the innate value of all the content your influencers generate.
Sadly, that’s an impossible question to answer, because there are just too many variables at play – program maturity, vertical, attribution model, cost definition, etc. Rather than obsessing over what’s a generic “good” ROI, work out what’s good for you by analyzing your:
Influencer marketing ROI typically looks worse than ROAS from paid ads because the cost side includes content production, reach, and the trust factor of using a creator’s face and name. Whereas with paid ads, the only “cost” included in ROAS is the ad spend.
Provided you’re working with the right influencers, you should start to see an initial return – more branded search, more website traffic, maybe even some direct sales – within a few days of launching your first campaign.
Out of the box, Shopify doesn’t show you per-creator code usage or referrals, which means you can’t see which influencers are actually generating sales. However, you don’t need a big tool stack to close this gap – you can either manually cross-reference discount code reports against a spreadsheet of who has which code, or use a single influencer tracking tool with a built-in Shopify integration (like Modash) to do it for you.
Yes, totally! While gifting or awareness-focused campaigns might not generate much of a directly attributable return, they absolutely contribute to ROI through things like increased brand search and direct traffic, and by generating content you can repurpose in ads or on your website.
🤓 Further reading: Learn more in How to Track Brand Awareness Campaign Impact (And Get Leadership Buy-in).
It’s most likely a matter of attribution. For example, say a customer sees an influencer recommending your product on TikTok, then Googles your brand, clicks through to your store, and makes the purchase. That sale will likely get chalked up to organic search, when in reality it “belongs” to your influencer program.
When you’re running multiple types of influencer campaigns at the same time, measurement becomes a two-step process. First, break down cost + results per campaign type, then second, roll the numbers up into a blended ROI figure for the whole channel.
For example:
That equates to a total attributable value of $25,000 against total costs of $10,000 for an ROI of 2.5:1.