Influencer Campaign Common Problems & Solutions

This is written for those who:

• Are running a influencer program and want to scale their existing influencer program

Problem, diagnosis & solutions

Creators are posting but sales don’t seem to increase

Problem: At enterprise size there are a lot of moving parts.

Diagnosis:

• Look at Amazon and your stores, not just your site. HexClad ran a YouTube test and found over 50% of the revenue it brought in landed on Amazon.
• Look at sales from older videos, not just this month's.
• Check if your biggest retailers run their own creator programs (can affect your sales). Ex. Target and Ulta Beauty both do.

Solution:

1. For one month, give creators an Amazon Attribution link next to your site link, so you can see how many of their buyers pick Amazon.

Click to enlarge

1. Have a clause to tell creators to update the link and code in the description few months to help stop site leakage.

Precedents:

We did a YouTube test and what we found on this test was that over 50% of revenue generated was being captured on Amazon.

Connor Rolain, head of growth at HexClad, How HexClad Spent $700K on One Creator and Won Big, Marketing Operators, 2026, 64:29

creating more seamless pathways from inspiration to purchase

Target Chief Digital and Revenue Officer Sarah Travis, on Target's creator programme, 6 May 2026

Caveat:

• Attribution is especially hard with influencers, so judge the program on total sales, and use codes and links only to compare creators with each other.

Resources:

• Amazon Attribution. See the sales your creator links send to your Amazon listing.

Your ads keep finding the same people

Problem: Your ads have already found most of the people they can, so more spend mostly shows the same people your ads again (with diminishing returns). Bigger creators look like the fix, but a big channel's audience can be the same people too.

Diagnosis:

• Ask your ads team how often the same person sees your ads. Portland Leather Goods' CMO was choosing between reaching more people and showing people ads 30 or 40 times.

Solution:

1. Ask buyers in your post purchase survey if this is their first order, and judge each creator on first orders, not total sales.
2. Book creators in the niches your buyers live in outside your category. AG1's biggest creator niche is travel, with 209 videos, and health is only third, with 77.
3. Move part of the budget from million subscriber channels to smaller creators in those new niches.
4. Pick one group of people you aren't reaching yet, and book creators whose audience is that group.
5. Run the creator videos that bring in the most first orders as ads, because they reach people your own ads haven't.

Precedents:

Is it that I think I'm going to spend way more money and I'm going to get to 70 million? Or am I going to spend way more money and my frequency goes to like 30 or 40?

Operators Titans E002: Portland Leather Goods (with CMO MacCoy Merkley), Marketing Operators, 2025, 45:50

Antetokounmpo's core audience skews 18-34, a demographic where IM8 is currently under-scaled.

Prenetics, IM8's parent company, announcing Giannis Antetokounmpo as a partner, 2 April 2026

Caveat:

• Our niche counts come from sponsored YouTube videos, so check your own mix on Instagram and TikTok.

Resources:

• Fairing Post Purchase Surveys (vendor page). A Shopify app that asks buyers how they heard about you, right after checkout.

Sourcing new influencers who are good is hard - you feel like you’ve already taken a lot of the good influencers

Problem: You already have a team of a few dozen top performers and the team is always looking for new influencers however, what then happens is you start reaching out to other influencers who are potentially less qualified, and then you try a couple videos, you see no performance, and you drop them

Diagnosis:

• Look at what percentage of influencers you sponsor that you haven't sponsored yet. This is very important because it will tell you your efficiency.
• Every influencer that you onboard incurs a fixed cost with the timing, getting to know their team, having to vet them, having to talk with them. If you are not continuing the relationship with them, then it's a huge waste.
• Think of it like hiring someone and then firing them a few months later.
• Count how many creators you booked again more than 60 days later.
• Industry averages: At $100 million and up it's 28%, against 40% for smaller brands.
• Compare your competitors rates. Ex. 81% of the creators LMNT first booked in 2023 got booked again, against 43% of AG1's.

Solution:

1. Split the budget between the big creators already proven and a wider pool of smaller ones you're still testing, since you can't know who else will perform.
2. Follow thorough vetting procedures like looking at returning viewer count Write down what a new creator has to do to move onto the first list, before their first video goes live.
3. Offer the creators on the first list a deal that runs a full year, instead of paying one video at a time.
4. For the few creators you'd hate to lose, look at paying part of it in equity. Black Rifle Coffee says in its annual report that select influencers are awarded equity in the company.
5. Give scouts different locations and devices, so each sees a different feed and finds different creators. Bloom's scouts use VPNs and spread iPads and iPhones around the country for different algorithms.

Precedents:

But then we also have to have the rest of our budget split in amongst enough creators cuz we don't necessarily know who's going to perform, who's going to, you know, resonate, and whose videos are going to do well.

Influencer Marketing Strategy: Product Seeding, Building Partnerships & Measuring EMV, Marketing Operators, 2025, 16:10

Social following for the 2022 Sephora Squad grew a combined 99% over the course of the year-long program

Sephora, on its year-long Sephora Squad creator programme, company newsroom, 21 June 2023

Use VPNs. Put your iPads, put your iPhones around the country, get different algorithms. What you don't want is the same 19-year-old Italian girl who lives in LA who shops at Erewhon. Her algorithm as she's scouting will look exactly the same as every other girl in that room who is scouting. So you want people with different algorithms going on, right? Because you want to find the mom in Kansas.

How Bloom Built the Playbook Every Founder Will Copy in 2026, Open Residency, 4:08

Caveat:

• Equity only makes sense for a handful of creators you plan to keep for years.

Do your paid team and your influencer team both count the same sale?

Problem: At your size, paid media, influencer and affiliate each have their own lead and their own dashboard. Add up what each one reports and it comes to more than you sold, and nobody can say what creators cost in total, because the costs sit in different budgets.

Diagnosis:

• Add up the sales each team claimed last quarter, and compare the total with what you actually sold.
• Count how many of your ads are creator videos. We found 40 partnership ads among 97 of AG1's own Meta ads.
• Look at where creator costs sit in your books. Vita Coco reports influencer costs in the same line as trade shows, product samples and event sponsorships.

Solution:

1. Put your influencer program under one owner instead of giving it a budget that competes with paid, so there is no separate channel number to defend.
2. Once a quarter, have each channel lead defend their plan against the same sales number, not against their own dashboard.
3. Settle arguments over credit with a region test or a media mix model. Newton Baby's CMO says you can't rely on the cookies when everyone claims the sale.

Precedents:

All the channel leads that report into me like our director of paid media, our influencer manager are doing the same thing. We meet on them. We discuss them. We kind of beat them up.

HexClad, Key Initiative Breakdown: When and how to diversify your media mix, Marketing Operators, 2026, 6:03

This is all double counted like what are you doing like how do you know who drove what

The MarTech Matrix: A Conversation with Aaron Zagha, CMO of Newton Baby, Sean Simon, 2024, 15:40

I don't want to get into this game where it's like hey here's my budget on this channel no my channel is doing so well

How 9-figure Brands Structure Their Organisations - Hiring, Delegating, Management & More, Marketing Operators, 2024, 69:56

Caveat:

• Each tool's own numbers are still fine for comparing creators inside one channel.

Resources:

• Robyn. Meta's free, open source media mix model for splitting your sales across channels.
• GeoLift. Meta's free tool for testing, one region against another, whether your spend brought in sales you wouldn't have made anyway.

Creators you want already work for a rival

Problem: In a crowded niche, the biggest names already take money from a competitor. They can't switch, because that deal is often most of their income.

Diagnosis:

• List the top creators in your niche and who already pays them.
• Ask if their deal blocks your category. Ex. Bucked Up wanted a Gronk Juice tie-in with Rob Gronkowski, already sponsored by Monster.
• Check who can afford to leave. Liquid Death's CEO says skaters can't walk away from Monster and Red Bull.

Solution:

1. Pick creators whose income doesn't all come from sponsors, so a rival's deal isn't their whole living.

Precedents:

As much as I love skateboarding in action sports, Monster and Red Bull and all those guys, they own that like these guys can't make money any other way other than sponsorships

Mike Cessario, Liquid Death co-founder and CEO, Toby Morse One Life One Chance, 2021, 90:37

He was already sponsored by Monster, so couldn't do it.

Bucked Up CEO On Building 300 Million Dollar Brand, Bevlab, 2026, 28:54

Your TikTok Shop sales aren't really organic

Problem: Affiliates post a lot, so the channel looks organic. But most sales come from ad spend, and you pay commission on top.

Diagnosis:

• Split sales into organic and GMV Max. A Marketing Operators host says brands he talks to that post often still get 70 to 80% from GMV Max.
• Add up everything the channel costs: commission, retainers and ad spend.
• Check what you pay affiliates. Organifi's CEO says brands bragging about revenue while paying affiliates 100% make no money.

Solution:

1. Pay a higher commission on organic sales, and a lower one on GMV Max sales, like Ridge does.
2. Judge the channel on what's left after commission, retainers and ad spend, not on revenue.
3. Set a margin line and pull back below it. A rival founder says Force Factor told its creators it was moving off TikTok Shop, unable to reach profitability.

Precedents:

The majority of TikTok Shop revenue of the brands I speak to comes from GMV Max. So, you're paying an affiliate commission, you're often paying some sort of retainer fees, so there's a fixed cost to it, and then you're turning around and you're spending dollars on it.

Channel Diversification in Ecommerce: Biggest Mistakes & Wins, Marketing Operators, 2026, 46:58

We found out Force Factor. They're one of the fastest growing brands in January. They're moving off Tik Tok shop completely because they can't reach profitability now.

Viral Brand Expert: The Content Strategy Nobody Is Talking About, The Anatomy of a Dream, 2026, 7:10

You have a higher affiliate commission on organic sales, you have a lower affiliate commission on GMV Max

Connor MacDonald, CMO of Ridge, TikTok Shop Masterclass: Inside Ridge & HexClad Affiliate Programs, Marketing Operators, 2026, 19:59

Caveat:

• GMV Max isn't the problem. The problem is calling those sales organic.

Booking a creator too often wears out audiences

Problem: When a creator sells, the obvious move is booking them every month. Their audience sees you so often that each video sells less.

Diagnosis:

• Line up a creator's videos about you by date, and look at sales from each one.
• Watch for smaller spikes from the same creator. Ex. Rogan's 20th mention no longer shows up as a blip.
• Compare the days between a creator's sponsored videos with the metrics table at the bottom of this page.

Solution:

1. Space out a top creator's videos about you, instead of booking them back to back. A vitamin brand rebooks its working creators every two months.
2. Set a gap for each top creator, and try a shorter one only while sales hold.

Precedents:

If we have too many of those integrations too close together, we've exhausted the audience really quickly. And that's actually a big issue that we've had is we've been exhausting these creators too quickly.

Influencer Marketing Strategy: Product Seeding, Building Partnerships & Measuring EMV, Marketing Operators, 2025, 89:55

This is like his 20th time mentioning us, if not more, but we don't even see the blips anymore.

The TikTok Growth Expert: The Strategy That’s Printing Millions Right Now, Open Residency, 2025, 71:20

We do rebook them bi monthly

a vitamin brand, on a call, February 2026

Caveat:

• Some creators can post often and keep selling. Let each video's sales decide.

One day click turns creator ads off early

Problem: A creator ad can look weak on one day click and still be selling, so it gets turned off before it pays back.

Diagnosis:

• Ask which attribution window your team uses to turn creator ads off.
• Look at the creator ads you switched off last quarter, and check their sales on a longer window.

Solution:

1. Judge creator ads on a longer window than your other ads, and write that down before testing.
2. Give big deals a month before judging. HexClad's one day click would cut ads off $75,000 into $100,000, before payback.
3. Check total sales by region too, the same way as in the first problem here.

Precedents:

If we would have only looked at one day click, we would have turned our ads off in a month and probably spent $75,000 on a $100,000 deal and not got our money's worth.

Connor Rolain, head of growth at HexClad, How HexClad Spent $700K on One Creator and Won Big, Marketing Operators, 2026, 44:40

But after about a month, the one day click really fell off.

Connor Rolain, head of growth at HexClad, How HexClad Spent $700K on One Creator and Won Big, Marketing Operators, 2026, 43:35

Caveat:

• A longer window credits sales you'd have made anyway. Check it against a region test.

Resources:

• GeoLift. Meta's free tool for testing, one region against another, whether your spend brought in sales you wouldn't have made anyway.

You can't prove creators pay back

Problem: Getting more budget needs proof influencers pay back, but that's hard to show, especially for bigger, pricier creators.

Diagnosis:

• List your priciest creators and count how many sales you can trace back to each.
• Ask finance how much proof they'd need before funding a bigger creator budget.
• Ex. Resident tracks hundreds of millions of impressions a year but not a ton of directly attributable revenue.

Solution:

1. Judge pricey creators on lifetime value, not one-day clicks, like HexClad did. That showed about 100% growth in return on ad spend against the rest of the account.
2. Run the one trackable sales channel first to bring back a tracked win, before asking the board for budget on spend you can't attribute, like a cannabis edibles brand does.

Precedents:

It's also been difficult for us to assess the impact of them. So it's difficult to then justify the investment. So we kind of caught in this catch 22 situation

a sound effects software company, on a call, January 2026

This also leads to issues with how much to pay an influencer for a partnership if we can't validate the value, it's hard to justify the cost, especially for larger or more expensive influencers.

Crystal Duncan, EVP of brand engagement at Tinuiti, to Modern Retail, July 2026

We don't see a ton of directly attributable revenue, but I also know that just getting hundreds of millions of impressions across social networks per year is a really smart thing to do

Resident's EVP Jared Brody on Attribution Tooling, Analytics Teams & Data-Driven Marketing, Marketing Operators, 2024, 25:43

I need to show an ROI on something that's a little bit more e-com based before I could get into a little bit more of the intangible brand equity that we could get with influencers and localized markets in Washington and New York, because I can't get direct sales numbers

the marketing lead at a cannabis edibles brand, on a call, June 2026

I think it was like 100% growth and return on ad spend going from like the one day click to the LTV compared to the rest of our account

Connor Rolain, head of growth at HexClad, How HexClad Spent $700K on One Creator and Won Big, Marketing Operators, 2026, 44:19

Booking creators late costs more

Problem: Brands that book late pay through the roof, because the cheap CPMs are gone and fees now cover reuse across every channel and format.

Diagnosis:

• Count how many of your active creator deals were booked at the last minute.
• Check whether your creator contracts name every channel and format your team can reuse that content in.
• Ex. Ridge's Sean Frank says the five to seven dollar CPM arbitrage is basically gone.

Solution:

1. Set a fixed CPM ceiling, about $50 for an integration and $100 for a video, and skip creators over it, even past collaborators, like a kitchen appliance brand does.
2. Cut the shoot commitment from once a quarter to twice a year and build one production playbook, like HexClad does.
3. Stop sponsoring thousands of creators one-off, and shift budget into fewer, deeper integrations, like Ridge does. Those videos return noticeably higher than the old one-offs.

Precedents:

The whole the partnership approach, sponsoring thousands of people, billions of views, was like a form of arbitrage. And that's like basically gone away. Like, we used to pay five, seven dollars CPMs.

Ridge's Sean Frank drops in! Talking big swings, partnerships and being a fireman CEO, Marketing Operators, 2024, 54:36

We're not just paying for the content anymore; we're paying to use their content across multiple channels, in multiple formats.

Hannah Ryan, global VP of campaign delivery at The Goat Agency, to Digiday, August 2025

What that then can mean is clients are paying through the roof, because they're not organized and they're coming to us too late.

Tiah Slattery, head of influencer at Dept, to Digiday, August 2025

We didn't collaborated with them, because it's the price, because we have, I just say that we have very strict step standard, yeah, I see, so we need to evaluate the CPM.

influencer marketing lead, a kitchen appliance brand, on a call, January 2026

Well and we've been able to go from saying hey you owe us a shoot day per quarter to hey we only want like two shoot days per year and that really brings down the cost of the deal but it's just because we know the playbook now

HexClad, Ecommerce Content Flywheel: Meta to TikTok, Paid to Organic, Marketing Operators, 2026, 54:55

Our CPM for integration is about 50 and for dedicated, dedicated video is about 100

a kitchen appliance brand, on a call, January 2026

We sponsored individually over 5,000 creators. So, like, we've worked with everybody and their mom, basically, right, across TikTok, Instagram, whatever else. Connor wants to see a world where we're doing less deals, but way deeper integrations

Ridge's Sean Frank drops in! Talking big swings, partnerships and being a fireman CEO, Marketing Operators, 2024, 53:43

Those videos return such a higher return

Ridge's Sean Frank drops in! Talking big swings, partnerships and being a fireman CEO, Marketing Operators, 2024, 54:16

Creators want flat fees paid upfront

Problem: Creators and their agencies want flat fees upfront, and a creator paid upfront can still underdeliver on what they promised.

Diagnosis:

• Ask your agencies how many of their creators will take anything other than a flat fee.
• Check whether any money is still owed after a creator's post goes live.
• Ex. a 2018 lawsuit alleged a creator posted just one story and one post, and skipped pre-approval.

Solution:

1. Cap a brand-new creator to one paid deliverable, and test if the audience fits before any bigger deal, like a shipping software company does.
2. Stop defaulting to a flat fee, and set a bonus only once a creator hits a new user threshold, like a shipping software company does.
3. Make creator approval and content sign-off two required gates before anyone posts, instead of trusting the agency's brief, like a kitchenware brand does.

Precedents:

It's really hard to find influencers that don't want, like, flat fee or an upfront payment, especially when they have an agency working with them

a shipping software company, on a call, May 2026

Sabbat made only one Instagram story and one post to his feed, and did not submit the post to PR Consulting for pre-approval, the suit alleges.

Read it: Variety, 2018-10-30

We cannot collab more than once with a creator that we never worked with. So I cannot, like, for example, close three videos or three months of work or something like this. It needs to be like, one reel or one deliverable, just to, like, test if the audience is a fit.

a shipping software company's influencer partnerships lead, on a call, May 2026

We make like, certain thresholds for them to achieve, like, Hey, if you bring me 20 users, I give you like, a bonus of $5,000

a shipping software company's influencer partnerships lead, on a call, May 2026

Nobody owns affiliate recruiting

Problem: Even nine-figure brands can't get affiliate to stick, because nobody owns recruiting new affiliates.

Diagnosis:

• Ask who on your team owns recruiting new affiliates, and how recently they added one.
• Ex. one beauty brand's founder still runs the program herself and hasn't recruited in a year.
• Watch the fees. A commission-only partner can still charge a flat fee, like $3,000 just to start.

Solution:

1. Give one outside agency full ownership of affiliate recruiting and the relationship after, paid a fixed cost per sale by tier, like a gaming network optimization software company does.

Precedents:

These are not like new brands these are nine figure companies that are asking for help with affiliate where seemingly they had you know like paid media figured out they had influ were figured out brand marketing was figured out you know experiential was figured out why is affiliate just this like revolving door of vendor strategies tactics initiatives

Scaling with affiliate marketing, with Aaron Paul, Marketing Operators, 2025, 15:48

Our founder manages this program. She is very much reactive, not really super proactive. When it comes to recruitment, we've talked about it for the last year. She just really hasn't been doing it.

a beauty brand, on a call, January 2026

It's all commission. And then it's like, but also, there's a $3,000 you know, fee for initiation.

a beauty device brand, on a call, March 2026

This agency is responsible like for recruiting creators to subscribe to the program and also like the relationship with them

a gaming network optimization software company, on a call, April 2026

Affiliates steal credit for sales they didn't make

Problem: Affiliates and leaked codes take credit and commission for sales they didn't bring in.

Diagnosis:

• Compare your affiliate platform's numbers against your own attribution tool before trusting either report.
• Some affiliates load multiple tracking cookies on a shopper's browser to grab credit without consent.
• Ex. one brand ran 10% off codes with creators, watched them leak, and just ate the cost.

Solution:

1. Cut media buying affiliates when your own ads reach those people, and keep content publisher affiliates whose audience you are not reaching, like one Marketing Operators host does.
2. Put one director in charge of your affiliate program full-time, someone who cuts affiliates left and right, like one Marketing Operators host does.
3. Refuse to pay commission on sales that come through leaked codes on coupon sites, like Newton Baby does. It calls the leak annoying, not a real problem.

Precedents:

Putting multiple tracking cookies on a user's browser without their consent and like this now will trick like a merchant system into attributing the sale to the affiliate

Scaling with affiliate marketing, with Aaron Paul, Marketing Operators, 2025, 48:04

We would just do 10% off with creators and we had a we had plenty leak and like we just kind of ate it

YouTube Deep Dive: Ads, Organic Growth, Partnerships & More, Marketing Operators, 2024, 74:43

We killed media buying Affiliates because we are spending like Ridge a lot of money on Facebook ads and all sorts of paid media ads and I just didn't believe that these affiliate driving Revenue were doing it in a way that wasn't just capturing our demand so we killed it

Scaling with affiliate marketing, with Aaron Paul, Marketing Operators, 2025, 45:50

We've used to use coupon codes and they get on the coupon sites and that's annoying but we don't pay for those so it's not the end of the world

How Newton Baby bootstrapped to profitability with performance based marketing - Aaron Zagha -..., Retail Band, 2020, 16:21

Our director of affiliate marketing she is a whiz at affiliate marketing she is so hard on these Affiliates like she is cutting Affiliates left and right

Scaling with affiliate marketing, with Aaron Paul, Marketing Operators, 2025, 46:25

It's also not relying on the affiliate platform as a source of Truth so the brands where we're the most successful with are the ones that give us a direct line of access into their internal attribution tools

Scaling with affiliate marketing, with Aaron Paul, Marketing Operators, 2025, 48:26

Your team still runs every creator one by one

Problem: The roster has outgrown the team, but every creator is still managed one by one, which is too slow, and complex products can't simply go to an agency.

Diagnosis:

• One video platform brand has a roster of over 300 creators, and calls it too many.
• Check how many creators and pieces of content your team reviews yourself instead of an agency.
• Ex. Ruggable's Lauren Sherman-Kaoud says it's still quite laborious to run a program at scale.

Solution:

1. Name a small top tier, like HexClad's five-chef culinary council, and shoot it in-house with a proven playbook. That confidence lets them commit bigger budgets upfront.
2. Hand the long tail of the roster to a freelance broker with her own large creator network, like HexClad does, instead of hiring in-house. It lets them activate more micro-creators and move faster.
3. Run seeding with an outside growth partner, like HexClad does, then bring it in-house once the team can carry the momentum.

Precedents:

It's still quite laborious to run an influencer marketing program at scale

Lauren Sherman-Kaoud, Chief Marketing and Creative Officer at Ruggable, to Modern Retail, July 2026

We want to shift slightly to a strategy where we create like a constellation of people and platforms and channels, again at scale, not one-to-one cuz that's too slow and painful

Operators Titans E002: Portland Leather Goods (with CMO MacCoy Merkley), Marketing Operators, 2025, 47:00

We have a roster of, like, over 300 it's too many.

a video platform, on a call, April 2026

We need to review the creators. We also need to review the content, because we can't just very trust of the agencies to know our product, because the education curve is a little bit higher in our products.

a kitchen appliance brand, on a call, January 2026

None of these people are true creators, which I think again gives us some alpha because we're we can bring them in and shoot content with them

HexClad, Ecommerce Content Flywheel: Meta to TikTok, Paid to Organic, Marketing Operators, 2026, 58:12

This woman has like this huge roster of creators. So she's basically become this like broker between us as a brand and this like huge roster of creators

HexClad, Ecommerce Content Flywheel: Meta to TikTok, Paid to Organic, Marketing Operators, 2026, 19:06

Influencers a huge one for us where we like developed the seating program with aligned growth for like 2 3 years, and over time we brought it in-house, and like we've carried that momentum internally

HexClad, Ari Murray’s Marketing Playbook: From Brand to Agency and Back, Marketing Operators, 2026, 32:02

Big fees don't pay back as organic posts

Problem: Big creator fees don't pay back as organic posts: small creators break even, big ones don't, and sales moved only once ads ran.

Diagnosis:

• Smaller 3K, 5K influencers can break even as organic posts; the 30, 40K ones can't.
• Ex. a fertility testing brand's $20k deal only paid off once they got the ad code and ran it.
• One six-figure deal with Benny Blanco brought four posts and 20 25,000 dollars in revenue.
• Don't trust your own taste to pick the winner. Ex. Grüns once called seeding content the worst they'd seen, then it became their top performer.

Solution:

1. Set a standing ratio of 10 times the content cost in paid media, like Jones Road does. Their first big deal broke even off one Instagram story alone.
2. Once a creator's partnership code post is already working, run it as a whitelisted ad with real spend, like a footwear brand does. One post reached about 90 million views.
3. Whitelist a batch of a creator's ads, cut the ones that don't perform, and scale only the winners while CAC holds, like a TRT telehealth brand does.

Caveat:

• Jones Road's second, bigger deal came in weaker, a bet that did not lose money, not a clear win.

Precedents:

We did this deal with Benny Blanco. It was like a six-figure low six-figure deal, made this gorgeous landing page, custom products. you know, he had like four posts or something driving to this landing page and I think we drove like, I don't know, 20 25,000 dollars in revenue on the products that were on that page

Channel Diversification in Ecommerce: Biggest Mistakes & Wins, Marketing Operators, 2026, 39:13

Most people like a smaller 3K, 5K influencer, like we can actually break even or be profitable on that. you know, as a whole in the program. It's just like the 30, 40K that we can't.

Cody Plofker, CEO of Jones Road, Channel Diversification in Ecommerce: Biggest Mistakes & Wins, Marketing Operators, 2026, 46:05

Once that same 20k we told them just, hey, give us the ad code will still pay you that much, blah blah blah, on a more of a retainer basis, but you give us the ad code, so that we can run it, and then immediately our sales were through the roof

a fertility testing brand, on a call, May 2026

We attempt to spend 10 times the amount that we spend on the content on the media. So, if we spend 10k, we need to spend 100k behind it. It's at least the goal.

Cody Plofker, CEO of Jones Road, Ecommerce Content Flywheel: Meta to TikTok, Paid to Organic, Marketing Operators, 2026, 40:42

Sometimes he has a video that has like 90 million views because we spend a lot of money on it.

founder, a footwear brand, on a call, January 2026

Her first Instagram story essentially broke even

Cody Plofker, CEO of Jones Road, Ecommerce Content Flywheel: Meta to TikTok, Paid to Organic, Marketing Operators, 2026, 41:43

I would say good performance, not excellent. We probably like a 17% content efficiency. That's just looking at meta

Cody Plofker, CEO of Jones Road, Ecommerce Content Flywheel: Meta to TikTok, Paid to Organic, Marketing Operators, 2026, 42:52

What our team would say to start with is whitelist a bunch of ads a creator has made, run some spend behind it, usually if you have 10 ads, two of them do well, cut all the others, and then push spend behind them, and if it was an acceptable CAC, then we'd continue to scale that up.

a TRT telehealth brand, on a call, June 2026

We had some of the seeding content that would come through that like we'd look at and we're like this is the worst content we've ever seen. We put it in the ad account it's the top performer.

Katie Cirulli, former president of Grüns, 5 Emerging Brands, 1 Playbook: Inside Grüns’ Marketing Pod System, Marketing Operators, 2026, 60:42

Metrics

Check your own numbers against the 493 D2C product brands in our records

• Commission rates are all over the place and nobody set them on purpose

If you have this problem, use this type of campaign