Influencer marketing is arguably the fastest-growing ad category, yet most brands still prove its worth with views and likes. That gap is exactly what AiMCO is going after. Australia’s industry body has convened its first measurement working group, and the direction is clear: business metrics, not platform vanity numbers. Standards will take time. Your CFO will not wait.
What AiMCO is actually doing
According to Marketing-Interactive’s report, the working group is chaired by Hypetap founder and group CEO Detch Singh. It will examine measurement standards, the data brands need to evaluate creator campaigns, and how influencer marketing can be better represented in marketing mix modelling (MMM). It meets monthly and draws on AiMCO’s brand and industry members.
Note the caution from AiMCO managing director Patrick Whitnall. The group is “not going to nail it in the first session.” Expect a slow build of shared definitions, not a rulebook next quarter.
That timeline is the point of this article. If you wait for a standard, you will spend the interim defending budgets with the same engagement screenshots you used last year.
Standards are coming, but your budget review is happening now. The brands that build commercial measurement habits first will set the benchmarks everyone else gets judged against.
Why platform metrics stopped being enough
Reach, views and engagement come from the platforms selling you the inventory. They are useful for optimising a campaign mid-flight. They are poor evidence that a campaign moved sales.
Singh put the executive reaction bluntly: “Great, but what does that mean for my sales?” He wants to tell a CMO the campaign had a business-level impact for a given spend. Few teams can do that today.
Nestlé’s head of beverage marketing, Melissah Toomey, described the standard worth copying. Her team treats creators like any other channel: define the brand problem, set objectives, measure against them. They pair longer-term brand measures with creator ROI through MMM, which puts creators on the same footing as TV, out-of-home and digital video.
The demand side is real. Deloitte’s Australian consumer research, as reported by Marketing-Interactive, found 38% of consumers had bought something based on a creator recommendation in the previous year, rising to 61% among Gen Z. But the report itself flags the catch: self-reported purchasing is not independently measured incremental sales. Treat that number as a reason to invest in measurement, not as proof of ROI.
Who pays for proof?
This is the uncomfortable part. Singh argues the bigger obstacle is not a lack of methodologies but a lack of willingness to fund them. He says advertisers in the US and UK more readily pay for independent effectiveness studies, while Australia leans heavily on analytics supplied by Meta, TikTok and other platforms.
He also sized the investment gap in the same Marketing-Interactive report, estimating roughly US$34 per person on creators in the US against about $16 in Australia. These are one executive’s estimates, so use them directionally.
He also pointed, in the same report, to a UK IPA effectiveness study that he said attributed about 4.5% of sales impact to creator activity, versus 32% for linear television, suggesting the channel is underinvested relative to its contribution. Again, that is Singh’s account of the research. Pull the original before you quote it to your board.
Seven things to adopt before standards land
You do not need AiMCO’s output to start. You need discipline in six areas, and a seventh that protects you legally.
- Write the business objective before the brief. Sales, consideration, new customers, or brand lift. Pick one primary outcome per campaign. Everything else is a diagnostic.
- Separate optimisation metrics from proof metrics. Keep views and engagement on a dashboard for creative decisions. Report incrementality, brand lift or modelled contribution upward.
- Build tracking into the contract. Unique codes, links, and usage-rights terms for content you will run as paid media. Retrofitting attribution after launch rarely works. Our guide to repeat creator contracts covers how to structure terms when ROI is still unproven.
- Feed creator spend into your MMM. Tag creator investment consistently by platform, tier and flight dates. MMM only works if the input data is clean. If your agency cannot give you weekly spend by channel, fix that first.
- Run holdout or geo tests on your biggest bets. One well-designed test per quarter beats a dozen unexplained dashboards.
- Make finance a co-author. If the funnel logic cannot survive an audit, it will not survive budget season. See how to build a funnel auditors trust.
- Audit disclosure and suitability. Measurement credibility collapses if the campaign gets pulled for compliance.
Should you wait for a standard?
No. Waiting is a decision, and it is the expensive one.
Standards typically codify what leading practitioners already do. The working group needs brand members to bring real approaches to the table. If your measurement is already structured, you shape the conversation. If it is not, you inherit someone else’s definitions.
There is a practical angle too. Singh notes that competition for creators has pushed costs up as global advertisers bid for talent. Rising prices without rising proof is a recipe for a budget cut. Tying fees to outcomes helps, and models like base plus incentive pay let you share risk with creators while your measurement matures.
Don’t let compliance undermine the numbers
Measurement and compliance are linked. A campaign that misleads consumers can become a liability, not an asset.
The ACCC’s influencer sweep reviewed 118 influencers and found 81% making posts that raised concerns under Australian Consumer Law, according to its media release on influencer scrutiny. The most common issue was failing to disclose brand relationships. Vague labels such as “sp” or “spon” were another frequent problem.
In the US, the FTC says in its endorsement guides FAQ that if enforcement becomes necessary, its focus is usually on advertisers or their agencies and PR firms. Brands cannot outsource this risk to creators.
Practical steps: score creators before money moves with suitability gates, and hold a compliance reserve so a takedown does not wreck your test design.
What to ask your agency this week
- Which of our campaigns can you tie to a business outcome, and how?
- Can creator spend be delivered in a format our MMM team can use?
- What share of reporting comes only from platform-supplied analytics?
- Who owns disclosure checks, and how are they documented?
Vague answers tell you where to invest first.
FAQs
What is AiMCO’s measurement working group?
It is a group convened by Australian industry body AiMCO, chaired by Hypetap’s Detch Singh. It brings brands and agencies together monthly to examine measurement standards, the data needed to evaluate creator campaigns, and how influencer activity fits into marketing mix modelling.
When will influencer measurement standards arrive?
There is no published date. AiMCO’s managing director has said progress will take time and the group will not solve it in its first session. Plan on building your own framework now and adjusting later.
Can marketing mix modelling include influencer marketing?
Yes, but it depends on data quality. You need consistent spend tagging by platform, creator tier and flight dates. Nestlé has said it uses MMM to assess creator ROI alongside longer-term brand measures.
Are engagement metrics useless?
No. They help you optimise creative and creator selection during a campaign. They are not sufficient proof of sales impact, so report them separately from outcome metrics.
How do disclosure rules affect measurement?
Non-compliant posts can be pulled, corrected or investigated, which breaks tests and wastes spend. Regulators such as the ACCC and FTC have both signalled attention to influencer disclosures, with the FTC noting advertisers are usually its focus.
What should a mid-size brand do first?
Pick one upcoming campaign, define one business outcome, build tracking into the creator contracts, and run a holdout test. That single cycle will teach you more than any dashboard upgrade.
Next step: choose your largest creator campaign this quarter and write one sentence stating the business outcome it must move. Then brief your agency and finance team on how you will prove it.
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