Anti-Vanity Metrics

Measuring performance is one of the most important and misunderstood parts of running an influencer program. As brands have been moving beyond codes and links as the primary source of truth, how do you actually measure what’s working?

Influencer marketing metrics tend to come under a lot of scrutiny, and I get why. After all, we’re not talking about Meta ads where you put $1 in and see $3 out in a clean dashboard.  

Do impressions really matter? What does EMV even mean? What are vanity metrics vs true performance signals?

At Aligned Growth, we look at the purpose and performance of influencer in two primary ways:

#1 - It’s an organic awareness driver.

As the saying goes, if you’re not growing you're dying. Well likewise, if you’re not reaching new audiences, you’re speaking into an echo chamber.

So… EMV and impressions. Are they vanity metrics? Yes and no. It depends how you use them.

EMV, or earned media value, is the industry’s best attempt at assigning a monetary value to all of this influencer content we’re all generating. But it’s not revenue, and the critique of EMV is that it is a bit arbitrary.

Several platforms and companies use several different formulas of “proprietary algorithms” to come up with EMV, resulting in lots of variation of value assigned to the same set of content.

We do see value in EMV by using it as a comparative metric to benchmark the social buzz on your brand versus your historical average, and versus your competitor.

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We ask not just what’s the cost of doing influencer, but what’s the cost of not doing it? When your competitors are taking up real estate on TikTok you don’t want to be the one losing relevance. Long story short, EMV is a straightforward way of seeing how you stack up against your competitors.

Impressions on their own don’t mean a whole lot. But are your impressions growing? How many impressions did you have this month versus your top competitor? Who is driving your impressions and with what kind of content? How much do your impressions cost? On what channel are they most cost effective? Now we’re getting to more interesting stories.

One of our favorite metrics to pair with impressions is CPM. If you’re putting any amount of money into influencer, this is a great way to measure how efficiently those dollars are being spent.

But let’s be clear: CPM is not a signal of growth. You could have a $10 CPM but still be stuck at 100k monthly impressions and never growing if you’re looking at CPM as the end-all instead of organic growth.

Once you start reaching efficient CPMs, that’s the signal to invest more in what’s working, not stay still where you’re at.

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#2 It’s a revenue driver through paid media.

The other way we measure influencer performance is in how effectively we’re equipping our paid media teams with a content arsenal and profiles to whitelist.

People ask us all the time how to measure revenue and sales from influencers, and this is our answer, every single time: Use whitelisted creator content as paid ads to drive measurable ROAS.

It’s no secret in 2026 that partnership ads were one of the best inventions Meta has come up with, and brands are crushing with them. (You can read more about this with our free whitelisting guide!)

Creator-amplified ads often outperform brand-handled ads. That’s not something we just made up, it’s something we are seeing in our clients ad accounts time-and-time again.

For what it’s worth, here’s what I think about the other metrics we hear thrown around in influencer marketing:

• ANY Meta ads metrics: 👍
• Engagement rate: 👎 (the FYP changed engagement rate forever)
• Saves and shares: 👍( the highest form of engagement)
• Likes: 👎 (it’s a passive engagement)
• Tagged content volume: 👍
• Posting frequency: 👍 (signals how interested your influencers or customers actually are in your product by how often they are sharing about it)

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At the end of the day, measuring influencer success isn’t just about chasing perfect attribution or obsessing over any single metric. It's about understanding the role influencers play across your entire growth engine.

When you zoom out, the real success comes from a combination of momentum (are you growing awareness efficiently?) and impact (are you turning great content into revenue through paid media?).

The brands that win are the ones asking better questions and investing in what’s actually moving the needle.

If you’re rethinking how you measure influencer performance or want a clearer picture of what success could look like for your brand, book a call with our team.

We’ll walk you through how we approach measurement, what benchmarks matter, and how to turn influencer into a true growth channel.

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