Only 34% of European marketers say they can confidently prove influencer ROI to finance leadership. IAB Ireland’s new Creator Effect Study just handed the rest of the industry a benchmark to close that gap, and it’s the most granular European creator ROI dataset published this cycle.
For brand teams still defending creator budgets with screenshots of engagement rates, this study is a gift. It’s also a warning. If your program can’t hold up against the new regional benchmarks, expect harder questions at the next budget review.
What the Study Actually Measured
IAB Ireland didn’t set out to produce another vanity metrics report. The Creator Effect Study pulled data from campaigns across Ireland, the UK, and continental Europe, tracking spend against a stack of outcomes: brand lift, purchase intent, click-through to owned assets, and sales attribution where retailers allowed data sharing. The methodology leaned on mixed media measurement rather than platform-reported numbers alone, which matters because platform dashboards have a well-documented habit of grading their own homework.
The headline finding: creator-led campaigns in Ireland and the UK delivered a median ROI of 5.2x when measured against blended media cost, outperforming programmatic display and matching or beating paid social in six of nine verticals tested. Beauty, fashion, and food and beverage led the pack. B2B and financial services trailed, though not by as much as skeptics expected.
Creator campaigns with defined affiliate or promo code tracking outperformed impression-only campaigns by nearly 3x on attributable ROI, according to IAB Ireland’s benchmark data.
That single stat should reframe how brand teams brief agencies going forward. If your creator brief doesn’t include a trackable action, you’re leaving money and proof on the table.
Why European Benchmarks Look Different From US Data
US creator ROI studies, the ones from eMarketer and similar firms, tend to skew toward mega-influencer and celebrity creator economics. Europe’s market structure is different. Fragmented languages, smaller national audiences, and a heavier reliance on micro and nano creators mean the ROI curve looks flatter but more consistent.
IAB Ireland found that nano creators (under 10,000 followers) delivered the highest cost-efficiency ratio across every market segment studied, echoing what Influencers Time covered in nano creators beating macro talent on a global basis. The Irish and UK data adds regional texture: nano creators in local-language markets like Ireland, the Netherlands, and the Nordics outperformed pan-European macro talent by a wider margin than in the UK alone, likely because audience trust correlates tightly with perceived local relevance.
This tracks with what Benelux marketers have already discovered. The Benelux budget playbook Influencers Time reported on earlier showed similar patterns: smaller, hyper-relevant creator rosters beating broad-reach macro deals on cost per acquisition.
The Agency Fee Problem Hiding Inside the Numbers
Here’s the uncomfortable part IAB Ireland’s report didn’t shy away from. When agency markups were stripped out of the cost side of the ROI equation, blended ROI jumped by an average of 22%. That’s not a knock on agencies broadly, but it does confirm what the ANA report on agency fees flagged last year: opaque fee structures are quietly eating into the very ROI figures brands use to justify program continuation.
Brands running in-house creator operations, a trend Influencers Time has tracked extensively through pieces like brands ditching agency markups and Coty’s in-house casting model, showed measurably tighter cost-to-ROI ratios in the IAB Ireland dataset. That’s not a coincidence. It’s a structural advantage of owning the relationship and the data.
Benchmarking by Category: Where the Money Performs
Not every vertical benefits equally from creator spend, and IAB Ireland’s category breakdown is genuinely useful for budget planning.
- Beauty and personal care: Highest median ROI at 6.8x, driven by affiliate-linked content and repeat-purchase behavior.
- Fashion and apparel: 5.9x median, with seasonal spikes tied to gifting periods.
- Food and beverage: 5.1x, boosted heavily by short-form recipe and unboxing content.
- Travel and hospitality: 4.7x, closely mirroring the affiliate-code success detailed in Influencers Time’s coverage of the Skift Summit findings on travel attribution.
- B2B and professional services: 2.9x, lower but still competitive against traditional demand-gen channels, and rising fast per the TP-Link B2B acquisition case study.
The pattern here isn’t subtle. Categories with a clear path from content to transaction (a code, a link, a swipe-up that leads to checkout) consistently outperform categories relying on brand lift alone. If your category sits in the lower tier, the fix isn’t necessarily bigger budgets. It’s better tracking infrastructure.
What This Means for Brand Teams Setting Budgets
Marketers reading this report shouldn’t treat the topline ROI figures as a green light to spend blindly. Benchmarks are directional, not prescriptive. Your category, market, and creator mix will shift the numbers.
That said, three actionable shifts stand out for anyone building a program for the year ahead:
- Demand trackable actions in every brief. Impression-only KPIs are the single biggest drag on measurable ROI, per this study and prior Influencers Time reporting on the 4 Rs framework replacing vanity metrics.
- Rebalance toward nano and micro tiers where local relevance matters. The efficiency gap is too large to ignore, especially in fragmented European markets.
- Audit agency fee structures against in-house alternatives. A 22% ROI swing from fee transparency alone is not a rounding error.
There’s a broader implication too. IAB Ireland’s study lands at the same moment the creator economy’s trillion-dollar trajectory is forcing brands to formalize five-year plans rather than run creator marketing as an experimental line item. Benchmarks like this one are exactly what CFOs will start asking for by default. Treat this report as a template for the kind of measurement rigor that will soon be table stakes, not a nice-to-have.
How Does This Compare to Global Attribution Standards?
Marketers working across US and European markets will want to cross-reference this with broader measurement frameworks from bodies like the HubSpot marketing research hub and platform-specific attribution tools from Meta Business and TikTok Ads. None of these replace regional benchmarking, but they help validate whether your platform-reported numbers align with independent third-party studies like IAB Ireland’s. Consistency across sources is the real signal. Wild divergence usually means someone’s measurement methodology is flawed, or worse, self-serving.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is IAB Ireland’s Creator Effect Study?
It’s a benchmarking report from IAB Ireland measuring creator marketing ROI across Ireland, the UK, and continental European markets, using mixed media measurement rather than platform-reported metrics alone.
What was the average ROI found in the study?
The study found a median blended ROI of 5.2x across creator-led campaigns in Ireland and the UK, with beauty, fashion, and food and beverage categories leading performance.
Do nano creators really outperform macro influencers in Europe?
Yes. The study found nano creators delivered the highest cost-efficiency ratio across nearly every market and category tested, particularly in local-language markets where audience trust in relevance is stronger.
How much does agency markup affect creator ROI?
Stripping agency markups from cost calculations raised blended ROI by an average of 22% in the study, suggesting fee transparency has a direct and measurable impact on reported program performance.
Which industries saw the weakest creator ROI in the study?
B2B and financial services showed the lowest median ROI at 2.9x, though both categories still outperformed several traditional demand-generation channels and are trending upward.
Should brands use this study to set global creator budgets?
No. The benchmarks are regionally specific to Ireland, the UK, and parts of continental Europe. Brands operating globally should treat this as directional context, not a universal standard.
Frequently Asked Questions
The takeaway for brand teams is simple: pull your last four quarters of creator spend, check whether trackable actions were built into the briefs, and compare your ROI against IAB Ireland’s category benchmarks before your next budget meeting. If the gap is wide, the fix is measurement infrastructure, not a bigger check.
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