Ad Specialist GmbH

Influencer marketing is hitting a clear turning point in 2026:

→ Creators are getting more expensive → Consumers are becoming more cautious, and customer journeys are getting longer → Attributing individual placements to direct conversions is getting harder.

That said, with many brands we still see the same pattern:

They book creators, check the CAC after 7 days, and decide whether the channel “works” or not.

The problem: influencer marketing is a push channel. You activate customer segments that weren’t paying attention to you before. They search, compare, see more ads—and they often convert via Meta or Google. If you measure the channel only on last click, it will systematically look worse than it actually is.

What we’ve learned from managing 10,000+ campaigns and €50M+ in ad spend:

The brands that truly grow with influencer marketing evaluate the channel on two levels in parallel:

→ Soft KPIs (brand search uplift, session duration, CPS, engagement, community sentiment) show early whether a campaign is having an impact—weeks before conversion data is meaningful.

→ Hard KPIs (CAC, NC ROAS, CVR, CLV) show at the end whether the campaign was profitable—within a realistic evaluation window of 60 to 90 days, with clean attribution.

That’s brandformance: not “brand vs. performance,” but both measured in parallel and weighted differently depending on the campaign phase.

And the foundation for that is solid UTM tracking at the creator level.

That’s exactly the setup we’ve been running for years for brands like Upway, Wetter Online, Emma, and HelloFresh.

If you’re looking for an agency that only optimizes for 7-day CAC, we’re not the right fit.

If you want to build influencer marketing into a standalone, long-term growth channel that brings brand and performance together—feel free to reach out to us.