Follower counts used to be the opening line of any creator pitch. Now brands want receipts. According to Digiday‘s Kimeko McCoy, advertisers are increasingly asking creators for cost per lead, cost per conversion, earned media value and similar performance numbers before they sign a deal, and some want Instagram link clicks and engaged YouTube views up front.
Sales, not just reach
Kimberly Duman, a managing partner at the creator management firm Glossary Artist, told Digiday that brands “want to see if there’s actual traffic being driven,” and that there’s a stronger push for each creator to be accountable for sales.
Joseph Perello, founder and CEO of the performance-based creator marketing platform Props, put it even more bluntly: “Cost per lead or cost per conversion. Simple as that.” He added that every client has a cost-per-conversion benchmark, even if that benchmark looks different from brand to brand.
McCoy frames the shift as another sign that creator deals are starting to look like programmatic advertising, judged by the same math as other performance marketing: cost per conversion, cost per lead and return on ad spend. Over the past year, creator platforms and agencies have rolled out AI-powered dashboards with years of historical data, letting brands check a creator’s engagement, conversion rate and other stats before a deal ever happens. In that world, follower count starts to look like a vanity metric.
Vetting happens before the contract
Stefani Stamatiou, CEO of Americas at the creator and influencer agency HYDP, told Digiday the agency looks at how a creator’s content performs before contracting them. HYDP reviews a 30-day window of a creator’s posts, including view counts, but leaves out viral hits so expectations stay realistic.
Views come with their own wrinkle. Digiday notes that YouTube changed how it counts views in August, so a view now registers the moment a video starts playing. That’s one reason the Horizon Media-owned agency Blue Hour is asking for “engaged views.” Matt Higgins, Blue Hour’s SVP and head of strategy, said the agency negotiates around audience fit, shares and expected performance, “with views as one input.”
Not every brand is all-in on the numbers
Some brands are taking a looser approach. Anna Doré, VP of brand and communications at Rothy’s, told Digiday the company isn’t “super subscribed to hard, hard metrics.” Rothy’s still tracks clicks and sales, but it puts more weight on whether a creator fits the brand. As Duman put it, “Great content will always win.”
Reliability is a metric too
Performance isn’t only about clicks. In an interview with ContentGrip‘s Maya Chen, Collabstr co-founder Kyle Dulay said that only 10.35% of brands on the influencer marketplace rehired the same creator within 60 days. He shared one example of a consumer-tech buyer that booked an Instagram creator with 26,000 followers and a 2.8% average engagement rate four more times in 60 days, because the creator delivered strong content within five business days.
Dulay also said creators with a perfect 5-out-of-5 rating on Collabstr are 11 times more likely to be hired than those rated one to three stars. ContentGrip points out that these are figures from Collabstr’s own marketplace, not an industry-wide retention rate.
The takeaway
For creators, the message is pretty clear: keep your own data. Track link clicks, conversions, discount code use and how your non-viral posts actually perform, because that’s increasingly what gets you paid. Pair those numbers with a reputation for hitting deadlines and being easy to work with, and you’ve got a rate card that holds up when a brand starts asking hard questions.
