Australian influencer marketing hit $830 million but only 35% of brands run always-on creator programmes, because the industry still can't measure the channel properly.
Creator marketing doesn't just sell this quarter. It compounds. A channel that compounds only pays out its multiplier if it runs continuously.
Australian influencer marketing hit $830 million this year. The channel is growing faster than any other media type in Australia. The industry still can't measure it properly.
That's the tension at the centre of creator marketing right now. Budgets are moving. Measurement hasn't caught up. The brands getting the most out of creator investment are the ones who figured out how to run it consistently regardless.
Only 35% of brands run always-on creator programmes. That number from IAB global research tells you something about how the industry treats the channel: as a campaign tool, not a compounding one.
Brands running always-on creator programmes, versus the effectiveness rate reported by those who do, per IAB global research
The 99% effectiveness figure from brands that do run always-on programmes is striking. It suggests the gap isn't between creator marketing working and not working. It's between brands that have built a system for it and brands that haven't.
IPA data puts long-term ROI for creator content at a multiplier of 3.35, the highest of any channel and above linear TV at 3.27. Long-term ROI accounts for brand-building effects over time, not just the conversion lift you can attribute within a campaign window.
The measurement problem isn't technical. The signals exist: brand search volume, follower growth rate, organic social performance, sentiment data and cross-channel attribution windows. The problem is that most brands treat creator spend as a line item to be optimised per campaign, not as a channel investment to be measured over quarters.
Shai Roitman of Sticki made the point clearly in a Mumbrella piece this week: the industry is running creator marketing like display advertising. The brief goes out, the content runs, the report comes back. Then the cycle resets with different creators.
That model doesn't capture what creator marketing actually does. The compounding effect builds in the relationship between creator and audience, and between creator and brand. A brief-based model resets that relationship with every campaign.
The brands winning in this channel have stopped thinking about it as a campaign. They've built rosters, long-term relationships and measurement frameworks that look beyond the 30-day attribution window.