How to measure creator ROI

What is creator ROI?

Return on investment: what a creator campaign earned you, after costs, for every pound or dollar you put in. It's different from ROAS (return on ad spend), which divides revenue by ad spend and ignores your margins and the creator's fee.

Use ROAS to steer ads day to day. Use ROI to decide whether to book a creator again.

What is a simple creator ROI formula?

Creator ROI = (gross profit from attributed sales - total creator cost) / total creator cost

Gross profit = attributed revenue x gross margin
Total creator cost = fees + usage rights + product and shipping + ad spend behind their content

A worked example, with made-up numbers: you pay a creator £1,500 in fees and rights, send £100 of product and spend £400 boosting their video, so total cost is £2,000. Their link and code bring in £8,000 of sales at a 60% gross margin, which is £4,800 gross profit. ROI is (£4,800 minus £2,000) divided by £2,000, which is 1.4, or 140%.

Use gross profit, not revenue. A campaign with a healthy ROAS can still lose money on a low-margin product.

How do you set up tracked links for creators?

Add UTM parameters to each creator's link so your analytics can tell their traffic apart. Google Analytics reads these:

• utm_source: where the traffic comes from, for example tiktok or instagram.
• utm_medium: the type of channel, for example influencer or paid_social.
• utm_campaign: the campaign or offer, for example spring_launch.
• utm_content: tells creatives apart. Put the creator's handle or video name here.

Values are case sensitive, so "TikTok" and "tiktok" show up as two sources. Pick a naming pattern, write it down and use it every time. Shorten the link for bios and stories, but check the shortener keeps the parameters.

Are discount codes better than links?

They catch different people, so use both. Links catch the people who tap; codes catch people who watched, then went to your site later on another device. Give each creator a unique code.

Codes leak. Once they reach voucher sites, you'll see orders from people who never saw the creator. If a code's sales jump with no new post, that's usually why. Expire codes at the end of the campaign.

How do Meta and TikTok attribute sales?

If you put ad spend behind creator content, the platforms report the sales they think they caused, inside a window after someone clicked or watched.

• Meta defaults to 7-day click, 1-day engage-through and 1-day view. Since March 2026, click-through only counts clicks on the ad's link. Meta also offers an incremental attribution setting.
• TikTok web campaigns default to 7-day click and 1-day view. Engaged view-through counts people who watched at least 6 seconds, or the whole of a shorter video, and converted later.

View-through numbers are where platforms and your store disagree most. Report click-based results and view-based results separately, and never add Meta's and TikTok's totals together: both will claim some of the same orders.

What is incrementality and do you need it?

Incrementality asks how many sales happened because of the campaign that wouldn't have happened otherwise. Attribution can't answer that, because it also counts loyal customers who'd have bought anyway.

The test is simple in principle: split people into a group that sees the ads and a group that doesn't, and compare. TikTok's Conversion Lift Study works this way, and Meta runs Conversion Lift tests, plus GeoLift, an open-source tool for comparing regions when people-based tests aren't possible. TikTok sets minimum spend and duration requirements for its lift studies.

For small budgets, a rough version works: run creator ads in some regions and not others for a few weeks, and compare sales against the same period before. Our view is that you need a lift test once creators are a big share of your marketing budget, not for a first campaign.

Which numbers should you report every week?

Keep it to one page and the same columns every week, so a change stands out.

How we report creator results at TBC

Every creator campaign we run gets tracked links and results per creator, so you know who to book again. Paid campaigns run on your own ad account, so you can check every number yourself.

• Plain weekly numbers on spend, sales and return, not a slide deck of impressions.
• Creators from the TBC Creator Network roster, 1,000 to 1,000,000 followers, shortlisted in days with their rates.
• A fixed quote before work starts, so the cost side of the ROI formula is known in advance.

See creator campaigns and paid social, or start a brief.

Questions

What is a good ROI for influencer marketing?

Any ROI above zero means the campaign earned more gross profit than it cost. Set your own target from your margins and what a customer is worth over time, not from an industry average.

Should creator ROI include repeat purchases?

If you can track them, yes, as a separate line. Report first-order ROI and customer-lifetime ROI side by side so nobody mixes them up.

Why do Meta, TikTok and my store show different sales?

Each counts with its own rules and windows, and the platforms include some view-through sales your store can't see. Use your store data as the referee.

How long should I wait before judging a creator?

For an organic post, most sales arrive in the first days, but codes keep working longer. For boosted posts, give it about a week so the platform's learning phase has data.