The Total Economic Impact™ Of CreatorIQ

Marketer Time Savings

Evidence and data. Interviewees said that creator discovery was faster, more streamlined, and more data driven with CreatorIQ. When it came to reporting, having all the raw data at their fingertips allowed custom data cuts that quickly answered specific questions. Taken together, these capabilities made their teams more responsive and their analysis more precise, and efficiencies enabled the rapid scaling of their creator marketing programs.

• Interviewees appreciated having all the data from a particular creator in one centralized feed, rather than having to do parallel research in every platform. The head of social media and influencer marketing from the CPG company said this capability cut their discovery time fivefold since they were active on five platforms. The senior social strategy manager for the technology company said their team reduced their per-creator discovery time from one day to 1 hour.

• The global head of content for the food and beverage company, who shared that they were uncomfortable being in a position of blind trust when it came to agency recommendations, appreciated that CreatorIQ gave them the ability to independently verify creator profiles during discovery. They said: “Seeing the metrics helps us make sure they are high-quality and a good brand match. You can’t see that in an agency slide deck. You need to validate it.”

• The discovery data available through CreatorIQ helped marketers base partnership recommendations on data rather than instincts. The senior social strategy manager for the technology company said: “Before, our recommendations would just be based on vibes. Now, with the CreatorIQ discovery function, we can look at gender, age range, and [other demographic criteria]. We can set up lookalikes to mimic what our paid campaign references are. That’s especially important for mid- and micro-creator tiers.”

• CreatorIQ’s lookalike ability saved time and expanded reach. Several interviewees said the lookalike function accelerated and improved their creator discovery work. The head of social and influencer marketing for the travel company said: “It’s helped us find similar creators — the ones we might have missed before because there were just a handful of us who were looking at creators, and everybody had a different feed. Now, we’re able to say, ‘We like these creators. Who’s similar, or in that same niche, or creates that same kind of content?’ We’ve used that tool to expand into other niches or find creators to build out different audience segments.”

• Reporting with CreatorIQ was easier and more robust. Interviewees universally said it was much easier to pull data snapshots from one platform rather than having to manually aggregate metrics. The head of influencer and creator marketing for the software company also noted that having raw data available made it easier to create custom data cuts to answer specific questions. The senior social strategy manager for the technology company said: “From questions like, ‘Should we continue working with this celebrity?’ to ‘The ongoing performance of our creator program is X.’ Five years ago, this information would be in 20 different campaign reports held by six different teams. It was a nightmare to go through them all and consolidate.”
  The head of social and influencer marketing for the travel company — who revealed that before CreatorIQ, reporting was so time-consuming that they only did it monthly — said the availability of data made them more responsive. They shared: “Now I can quickly jump into CreatorIQ and say, ‘Here’s the number you need for that meeting.’ I think it’s made us more agile as a team that’s reporting up.” The head of social media and influencer marketing for the CPG company agreed that they often pull insights from CreatorIQ for corporate and C-suite presentations.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization manages creator discovery and post-campaign reporting in-house, while other operational tasks related to its creator marketing program (like campaign setup and creator contracting and payment) are handled by agencies, which also have seats in CreatorIQ.

• The composite organization worked with 1,650 creators before implementing CreatorIQ. As its creator program scales, the number of partnerships increases to 2,000 in Year 1, 3,000 in Year 2, and 4,800 in Year 3.

• When the organization does discovery work on potential new creators, it evaluates an average of five creators for each one it eventually partners with.

• Evaluation of each potential creator took 5 hours before CreatorIQ. After CreatorIQ, that process takes 1 hour.

• The composite organization conducts 300 discrete creator marketing campaigns in Year 1, which scales to 450 in Year 2 and 720 in Year 3.

• The process of reconciling multiple reports across different platforms for post-campaign reporting took 20 hours before CreatorIQ. With CreatorIQ, that process takes 2 hours.

• Forrester includes a standard 50% productivity recapture rate for all time-savings benefits in financial models.

Risks. The scale of this benefit may vary from organization to organization based on:

• The size and scope of the organization’s creator marketing program before onboarding with CreatorIQ and the pace at which that activity scales with CreatorIQ in place.

• The number of individual tracking solutions used before CreatorIQ, which affects the effort required to reconcile data from different sources in post-campaign reporting.

• The operational tasks performed by in-house teams at the organization versus outsourced to agencies. For campaign management tasks outsourced to agencies, organizations won’t likely have visibility into time savings enabled by CreatorIQ.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $3.8 million.

Profit From Additional Reach

Evidence and data. Interviewees said that as operation of their creator marketing programs became more established and streamlined in CreatorIQ, they saw growth in the number of impressions driven by creators.

• The retail company experienced an explosive triple-digit percentage growth in impressions in its first full year with CreatorIQ. This stayed stable in Year 2. The travel company, which had a smaller-scale program than many of the other organizations, saw a 42% growth in impressions during its first year on the platform, and an additional 10% growth from Year 2 to Year 3.

• Interviewees also discussed how CreatorIQ’s benchmarking helped them track key metrics — share of voice and earned media value (EMV) — that put reach into the broader context of consumer conversation and brand consideration within their industry segment. The head of social media and influencer marketing for the CPG company said: “We benchmark against ourselves or against our competitor set, and that’s easy to see in CreatorIQ. We usually look at our top five competitors on a monthly basis, and we can very much see where we stand. Earned media value and share of voice are really important to us, and those have been easy to quantify.”

• The head of influencer and creator marketing for the software company said their data showed a direct link between creator-driven marketing impressions and nearly 2 million product sales. Other interviewees could not share sales data but validated that CreatorIQ’s industry benchmarks had substantiated performance improvement over time. The global head of content from the food and beverage company said their creator partners had shown “dramatic improvement” over previous years in comparisons within their category, and that their program was “in a much better place.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• This benefit models the value of incremental growth in impressions each year as compared to the 825-million baseline.

• The composite organization’s creator marketing program generates 825 million impressions annually before implementing CreatorIQ. As the creator program scales, impressions grow to a total of 1.16 billion by end of Year 1, 1.39 billion by end of Year 2, and 1.52 billion by end of Year 3. Those numbers reflect a year-over-year impression growth of 40% in Year 1, 20% in Year 2, and 10% in Year 3.

• Those incremental impressions gained each year, when multiplied by the composite organization’s baseline 0.75% CTR, 1.5% conversion rate, and $100 AOV, generate additional sales revenue, which is then multiplied by the organization’s 10% profit margin.

Risks. The scale of this benefit may vary from organization to organization based on:

• The size and scope of the organization’s creator marketing program before onboarding with CreatorIQ, and the pace at which that activity scales with CreatorIQ in place.

• The organization’s baseline CTR and conversion rate.

• The organization’s AOV.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $1.2 million.

Profit From Improvement In CTR

Evidence and data. Besides growth in the quantity of impressions, interviewees also shared evidence that the quality of those impressions positively impacted sales.

• The travel company interviewee shared that their engagement rate — reflecting the portion of creator content that receives likes, comments, and shares — increased 46% in Year 1 and another 32% in Year 2.

• The retail company interviewee shared that their engagement rate increased 66% in Year 1 and another 220% in Year 2. The company’s senior vice president of marketing explained that the value of creator marketing over brand advertising is greater authenticity and relevance for consumers, and that CreatorIQ helps their company maximize that advantage. They said, “We came to CreatorIQ because there’s a playbook that’s about driving relevance that drives revenue.” With that higher engagement, the retail company’s click-through rate improved over time.

• Interviewees said that once CreatorIQ empowered them with data, they could make more informed, data-driven decisions that translated into better performance. The head of influencer and creator marketing for the software company explained the correlation between better management of their program through CreatorIQ and the performance of their creator-driven impressions. They said, “Because we’re able to get much more granular with our discovery, we’re able to find creators who are a better fit for our campaign and content style, and we’ve been able to drive higher engagement rates.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• This benefit models the value of incremental improvement in CTR with CreatorIQ, as compared to the 0.75% baseline.

• As CreatorIQ allows the composite organization to improve the overall quality of its creator-driven impressions and sees a boost in engagement rate, the organization sees a 5% improvement over its 0.75% baseline CTR, for an improved CTR of 0.79%.

• The improved CTR is applied to the total impressions. Then, the baseline condition — the clicks generated from 825 million impressions at a 0.75% CTR — is subtracted.

• The conversion rate stays constant during the three-year study period at 1.5%.

Risks. The scale of this benefit may vary from organization to organization based on:

• The size and scope of the organization’s creator marketing program before onboarding with CreatorIQ, as well as the pace at which that activity scales with CreatorIQ in place.

• The organization’s baseline CTR and conversion rate.

• The organization’s AOV.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $1.3 million.

Agency Tool Costs Reallocated

Evidence and data. Interviewees also said bringing data management in-house with CreatorIQ allowed them to reallocate agency spending from technology to services. The move also gave them more strategic flexibility with their data.

• The senior social strategy manager for the technology company said: “We used to have to pay for agencies’ proprietary tools [to manage our creator marketing data]. We had $50,000 to $100,000 allocated to tooling per agency — times eight agencies on an ongoing basis. By removing that, we generated $1 million in savings every year.”

• While the budget savings was helpful, this interviewee said reclaiming ownership of their data was actually the bigger benefit. They said, “If we move on from that agency, they don’t take our data with them.”

• Other interviewees echoed that sentiment about data ownership giving them more flexibility and control when it came to agency relationships. However, all interviewees also said they were highly likely to continue working with marketing agencies well into the future, so the story wasn’t about retiring agency costs but rather reinvesting them where those dollars could deliver more value. At the same time, interviewees recognized that reclaiming ownership of their own data was a critical strategic investment.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization incurs annual licensing fees from several agencies for proprietary creator marketing measurement tools.

• Those costs are eliminated once the organization moves to CreatorIQ and is no longer dependent on agencies for program measurement.

Risks. The scale of this benefit may vary from organization to organization based on:

• The number of agencies the organization works with on creator marketing and how many of those agencies pass along licensing fees for proprietary tools.

• The costs of those tools passed along to the organization.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $497,000.

Unquantified Benefits

Benefits that provide value for the composite organization but are not quantified for this study include:

• Data standardization. Interviewees universally appreciated having a single source of truth when it came to the performance of their creator marketing program. Aside from the time savings it enabled by removing the need to manually merge disparate data sources, having one standardized source of information also enabled more confident conversation, analysis, and advocacy, particularly between program managers and corporate leadership. The senior social strategy manager for the technology company said: “Executives always want quantified benefits. With CreatorIQ, leaders have shifted from ‘I need data’ to ‘I need to know what actually matters.’ This new streamlined approach makes it much easier [for leaders to be more objective] because they have something to compare to. Before CreatorIQ, the question was, ‘What am I supposed to look at?’ Now we have a quantifiable metric to compare against.”
  Having realized the conceptual value of this benefit, interviewees were beginning a second phase, where performance metrics of creator marketing programs could be compared head-to-head with those of brand marketing. As those analyses mature, this benefit could be quantified in terms of improvement in budget spend efficiency or growth in share of budget.

• Higher creator quality. All interviewees said that establishing long-term partnerships with high-performing creators was a program objective because it built frequency and familiarity that could lead to higher engagement. The senior social strategy manager for the technology company said: “With more frequency, an audience is more likely to connect with you. [Creator reuse] builds authenticity.” Interviewees also said CreatorIQ helped them to more confidently identify which creators were the high performers who were worth bringing back. While interviewees were able to estimate the overall percentage of creators who were “repeats” in their stable of talent, they did not specifically track this metric over time, which would be required to quantify this benefit. Further correlating that metric with the engagement rates for those campaigns versus the campaigns for first-time creators would offer an even better indication of how closely creator reuse is tied to performance.

• Stronger brand governance. As creator marketing gains in popularity, more teams will want to leverage these partnerships for their promotional content — something interviewees said was already happening in their organizations. The head of influencer and creator marketing for the software company said their PR and product marketing teams were also asking to work with creators, dispersing creator programs and making it even more critical to have organizationwide brand compliance for creator programs.

• Stronger brand compliance. Stronger governance was critical to ensuring brand compliance, brand safety, and for one interviewee in particular — the global head of content at the food and beverage company — regulatory compliance. More generally, they stressed the important role CreatorIQ played in their organization in improving brand consistency: “From three years ago to today, we’ve seen a major turnaround. Before, [our content oversight] was mostly tactical, with no real attention to branding. Now, briefs are more on-brand and on-strategy, and we verify the brand hygiene — things like seeing brand elements in the first 5 seconds of a piece of content.” The head of influencer and creator marketing for the software company said: “CreatorIQ helps us easily flag if there’s something of concern in a creator’s history. It was a much more manual process before. Controversial creators can be okay if you know what you’re getting into, but it’s important to go into the relationship with eyes wide open, and CreatorIQ helps us do that.” Quantifying the value of brand governance and brand compliance would require more discrete tracking of brand hygiene and how it correlates with better content performance, as well as longitudinal data showing a decline in controversies or regulatory fines over time.

• Legitimacy for the creator marketing program. Interviewees said that stronger data consistency and oversight through CreatorIQ allowed them to build legitimacy for their programs both internally, with corporate leaders, and externally, with the creators themselves. The head of social and influencer marketing for the travel company said they were starting to use CreatorIQ data to create comparative cost-efficiency metrics proving they could outperform brand ads, which would be the next step in quantifying this benefit. They said: “Oftentimes, there’s no real context when there’s $1 million up for grabs, and the leaders are wondering, ‘Should we give it to the creator program or something else?’ We’ve started to compare our metrics against metrics that marketing leadership is looking at, and we know that creator marketing, from a [cost-per-mille] CPM perspective, performs better than or equal to other areas.”
  The travel company interviewee also said that cost-efficiency data helped them be a more discerning buyer and a stronger negotiator with individual creators: “Now, we feel a lot more confident [negotiating with] creators. Because I have that CPM, I’m able to say, ‘At that rate, you would have to do this many impressions, so this is probably not going to work.’”

Flexibility

The value of flexibility — or future business opportunities enabled by an investment made today — is unique to each customer. In the case of CreatorIQ, interviewees spoke about the ability to further optimize their creator marketing programs once the platform allowed them to accurately and consistently track meaningful metrics over time. Interviewees discussed the following opportunities:

• Further performance optimization. Once CreatorIQ allows companies to centralize and standardize metrics for their creator marketing program and reclaim data stewardship from agencies, analysis and optimization are the next steps. Just as the travel company interviewee talked about tracking CPM and making creator selections accordingly, organizations have tremendous opportunities to experiment, measure, iterate, and put more of their budget behind strategies and partners that deliver the best results. In this way, CreatorIQ allows creator marketing directors to take the same approach of continuous data driven optimization, and even personalization, that pushed their digital marketing colleagues to greater success in the past couple of decades.
  Further, one interviewee suggested that continuous quality improvement will become increasingly important as AI drives an exponential increase in quantity across all types of content. The senior vice president of marketing for the retail company said: “As the proliferation of AI content continues, the ability for creators to carry messaging authentically is going to be even more important. Will the [creator marketing] environment get more crowded? 100%. That’s where a data layer like CreatorIQ is so important in understanding how to be strategically driven.”

• Improved cost efficiency. The ability to track the performance of individual creators and particular pieces of content, as well as to reuse the ones that perform well, allows companies to optimize and reduce both media spend and creative budgets. By reusing creator content in paid media plans, marketers get access to high-quality authentic content for less than what they might pay for AI-generated content.

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Total Economic Impact Approach).