What creator marketing returns, on the independent evidence

If you have spent an afternoon researching whether to try creator marketing, you have probably met a number like "eleven dollars back for every dollar spent."

It is a memorable number, and it is worth knowing where it comes from before you plan against it. It traces to a slide deck written by an influencer marketing software company in 2016, covering a single Fortune 500 food brand running 258 creators in late 2015. Nielsen Catalina measured the till receipts, which is real work, but the eleven times figure is a twelve month advantage measured against display advertising, not a return on spend. The other number you will meet, around five to six dollars per dollar, comes from an annual industry survey of what marketers believe they got.

Both point the same way, which is encouraging. Neither is a figure to build a budget on. Fortunately there is now something better.

The number worth knowing

In October 2025 the IPA, the UK advertising industry's professional body, published the first serious cross-industry analysis of influencer campaign returns. It covers 220 campaigns from 144 brands across 36 sectors and 28 markets, representing more than £133 million of disclosed creator spend. This is econometric modelling submitted by member agencies, not a vendor survey.

On short term return, creator marketing scored an index of 99. Paid social scored 86. Linear television scored 97.

On long term effects, creator marketing scored 151 against paid social's 77, with a long term multiplier of 3.35, the highest of any media channel measured.

Read that as a comparison rather than a multiple. An index of 99 sits level with the all channel average. Creator marketing, on this evidence, beats paid social by a clear margin on immediate return, holds its own against television, and keeps working for longer than anything else in the mix. If you are already spending on Meta or Google and wondering whether creators deserve a slice of it, that is the finding that matters.

Two caveats, because you should hear them from us. The short term figures rest on a subset of 59 UK campaigns and the long term figures on 18, so these are early numbers from a small base. And the data is voluntarily submitted by IPA members, so the campaigns people chose to submit may not look like the average campaign. The IPA says as much itself. Read the index as a cross-campaign comparison, not as a result an individual campaign should expect to reproduce.

Creator marketing, on this evidence, beats paid social by a clear margin on immediate return, holds its own against television, and keeps working for longer than anything else in the mix.

Why it suits a first campaign

A focused first campaign lets you test creator marketing against a clear objective before deciding how to expand it. In the IPA data it drove 4.5 percent of short term sales, against 13 percent for paid social and 32 percent for linear television. That is exactly what makes it a good first move: you are not being asked to move your main budget. You are running a few thousand pounds through a channel that, on the best independent evidence available, works harder per pound than the paid social you already buy, and keeps returning after the flight ends.

The market has reached the same conclusion. EMARKETER forecast in March 2025 that US brands would spend 10.52 billion dollars on influencer marketing during 2025, rising to 13.7 billion by 2027, and expected 2025 to be the first year that more than half of US marketers at companies with 100 or more employees used influencer marketing on YouTube. Those are forecasts, and that enterprise sample is bigger than most first-time buyers, but the direction is not in dispute.

What a first campaign needs

Three things, in order.

• A goal you can measure. Sales through a code or link, sign-ups, or reach into a specific audience. Pick one and let it decide everything else.
• Creators who fit and who want the work. Fit is audience, content and price point. Wanting the work is the part no database can tell you, and it decides whether the campaign happens at all.
• A clear agreement. Deliverables, dates, usage rights and payment terms, written down once so both sides are working to the same job.

The first and third are yours. The second is where most first campaigns lose their momentum, because finding creators and getting real answers from them is slow, repetitive work. It is not the hard part of marketing. It is admin, and it is the part worth handing over.

Wanting the work is the part no database can tell you, and it decides whether the campaign happens at all.

What CreatorCall does with that

You start a campaign and write a Creator Call: what you need, what you are paying, and what you want back. We contact creators who match it, read every reply, verify each one against the requirements you set, and come back with a shortlist of creators who have already said yes.

That takes 3 to 7 business days depending on how many creators you asked for, or 2 to 3 on express. Each creator arrives with their handle and profile link, their platform, their niche, their location and language where we know it, and the rate they quoted against your specific Creator Call. Not a rate card. Your Call.

From there the campaign runs in one place: chat with the creators you choose, contracts, the Campaign Brief you hand to a booked creator, payment, and post performance, depending on your plan. There is no marketplace, no bidding and no markup on creator rates. Creators keep their agreed rate, and the commercial relationship is yours.

Three ways to run it. Sponsored, where the creator posts and you are buying their audience. UGC, where creators produce content for your brand to use under the usage rights you agree, without requiring them to publish it on their own channels. Ownership and permitted usage should reflect the agreement. Affiliate, where creators promote on commission through the affiliate program you already run, on Impact, PartnerStack, Awin, Amazon Associates or Levanta. In that last one we never touch tracking, attribution or payouts.

CreatorCall is built by TERCZA, a creator marketing agency. It is the software version of what we spent a long time doing by hand.

Where to start

Pick one product. Set a budget you can measure against. Ask for three creators.

Your shortlist arrives within the delivery window shown before submission. Production and publishing dates are then agreed with the creators you select. That is a small enough first step to see whether the IPA's index of 99 shows up in your own numbers. In the end that is the only figure that should decide it.

If you want the mechanics before you spend anything, how to write a Creator Call covers the part you write, and paying creators with confidence covers the money.

Sources

• IPA Influencer Databank, 8 October 2025. Short term figures rest on a UK subset of 59 campaigns, long term on 18.
• EMARKETER, March 2025 forecast. Forecasts, not measured results; the "US marketers" sample is companies with 100 or more employees.
• TapInfluence and Nielsen Catalina Solutions, "Sales Effect Study: Influencer Marketing," 2016. A vendor-authored deck covering one brand.