Influencer marketing has matured from a niche experiment into a multibillion-dollar force. By 2025, global creator spend has exceeded $30 billion and in South Africa nearly two-thirds of brands plan to increase their influencer budgets this year. Some are going so far as to allocate almost half of their total marketing spend to influencer-led campaigns.
With fragmentation in traditional media and the constant demand for content, creators have become indispensable partners in helping brands remain visible in culture.
Yet beneath the headlines and Cannes-winning case studies lies a more sobering reality: most campaigns fail to deliver meaningful impact. Recent studies suggest that nearly three-quarters of influencer efforts do not meet their stated KPIs, while more than half of marketers admit they struggle to measure return on investment with any confidence.
The promise of influence is undeniable, but its effectiveness remains frustratingly elusive.
A maturing, but uneven industry
The surge in creator budgets reflects both necessity and optimism. Social platforms have entrenched themselves at the centre of culture and brands that ignore them risk irrelevance. In fact, Cannes 2025 sent a clear signal when almost 90% of Lion-winning social campaigns had influencers at their core. But as with any fast-growing sector, exuberance often outpaces rigour.
The majority of influencer ads are still not optimised for the platforms they run on. More than half of creative assets deployed across social fail to meet best-practice guidelines, from brand mentions to sound design.
Only 3% of influencer advertising adheres to safe ad zones across platforms. The result is wasted investment: billions of dollars in media spend that fail to capture attention or drive conversions. Only 14% of creator ads are watched beyond three seconds and almost half of those campaigns lack a brand mention early enough to register with audiences.
This is not a failure of influencers themselves, but of how brands are structuring and managing these partnerships. At its best, creator marketing connects brands to communities in ways no traditional channel can. At its worst, it produces vanity metrics that impress in dashboards but leave no lasting brand equity.
Back to basics
The first step in shifting from illusion to impact is a return to fundamentals. Tactical effectiveness cannot be sacrificed for the sake of reach. Ensuring brand integration happens in the opening moments of content, optimising creative for specific platforms and respecting the nuances of each format remain non-negotiables.
In a fragmented attention economy, the smallest creative adjustments can have outsized effects on completion rates and cost efficiency.
From reach to relevance
The deeper challenge, however, is one of alignment. Influence is not merely a numbers game. Consumers increasingly judge partnerships through the lens of shared values. According to global trust surveys, over 60% of people are more inclined to trust brands whose chosen creators reflect their own beliefs.
That trust cannot be manufactured by follower counts; it requires careful curation of voices that resonate authentically with the communities a brand seeks to serve.
This is why long-term partnerships are beginning to eclipse one-off campaigns. Creators want to be involved earlier in the process, shaping the brief rather than simply amplifying it. Co-creation fosters relevance and gives audiences a clearer sense that the collaboration is genuine rather than transactional.
Brands that embrace this approach often find themselves building equity that outlasts any single campaign flight.
Structuring for performance
Moving the industry forward will also require a harder stance on metrics. Chasing raw followers or likes obscures what really matters: engagement and conversions. Data reveals that most failed campaigns involve influencers with negligible engagement rates, while those who foster true community interactions deliver far more sustainable outcomes. Engagement rates are a much stronger predictor of campaign success than CPM rates.
To unlock this value, marketers need to define sharper KPIs from the outset, design hybrid compensation models that balance reach with performance and match creator type to campaign stage.
An emerging toolkit of data-driven platforms makes this more achievable, but it demands discipline from both agencies and clients.
Where influence goes next
There are already signals of progress. Award-winning case studies from brands such as Unilever and Skol demonstrate that with creativity, alignment and executional discipline, influencer partnerships can be both culturally resonant and commercially effective. They serve as proof that the problem is not with the medium itself but with how it is being harnessed.
As the creator economy continues to expand, marketers face a choice. They can chase the illusion of influence, rewarding surface-level metrics and sporadic campaigns, or they can build for the long term by engineering partnerships that are tactically sound, values-driven and structured for measurable performance.
With over 25 years of experience in the communications industry, Jonty Fisher a seasoned strategist, agency and people leader who has grown and managed several independent and network agencies in South Africa. Currently, he serves as the chief strategy & integration officer of Publicis Groupe, overseeing the growth strategy of the Groupe in Africa.
Sources:
The State of Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report 2024
Launchpoint Study 2024
Edelman Trust Survey 2023
WARC How to measure influencer marketing
SAMY Study 2025: Challenges in building loyalty and measuring impact
