I’ve been running parallel influencer campaigns in both Russia and the US for our brand for about eight months now, and I’m totally stumped by something: the same metrics mean completely different things depending on which market I’m looking at.
For example, a campaign with a Russian micro-influencer might show 8% engagement rate and I can trace it to roughly 2-3 actual sales. The same 8% engagement from a US creator? Maybe 0.5 sales, if I’m lucky.
At first I thought it was just attribution issues—maybe the US audience is clicking but not converting. But I’ve triple-checked my tracking pixels, UTM parameters, and landing pages. Everything’s clean.
Then I started wondering: are the metrics themselves just fundamentally different between markets? Like, is 8% engagement on a Russian Instagram post somehow “higher quality” than 8% engagement from a US TikTok? Or am I measuring the wrong things entirely for each market?
I’ve looked at some of the platform benchmarks, and yeah, there are differences. But it still doesn’t explain why the funnel just… works so differently. In Russia, I can almost predict sales from engagement. In the US, it feels random.
I feel like I’m missing something obvious. Are the audiences just different? Is the conversion behavior different? Or am I using the wrong metrics to evaluate success in each market, and I should be looking at something completely different?
What’s your experience with this? How do you actually compare influencer ROI across totally different markets without driving yourself crazy?
Also, audience composition. Russian e-commerce audiences skew older and more price-sensitive. US DTC audiences, depending on your category, might be younger and brand-loyalty focused. That changes conversion behavior independent of the influencer’s quality.
I’d pull a cohort analysis: compare the cohorts of users who clicked from influencer links versus other sources in each market. Are they demographically different? Behaviorally different? If the conversion rate gap persists after you control for audience composition, then you know it’s not just a metrics problem—it’s a market problem.
This is a classic attribution problem masquerading as a metrics problem. Let me ask you a few clarifying questions:
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Are you using the same measurement window in both markets? If not, that’s your issue right there. A US customer might take 14 days to convert; a Russian customer might convert in 3 days. Different attribution windows destroy comparability.
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What’s your price point and product category? That matters. Low-ticket impulse purchases convert faster; high-consideration purchases don’t.
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Are you running the same type of creator campaigns in both markets, or different formats? (E.g., dedicated posts vs. stories vs. reels)
My hypothesis: your US campaigns are performing fine, but you’re expecting Russian-market conversion velocity in a market with completely different purchase psychology. US DTC brands typically see influencer ROI show up over 7-21 days; Russian brands often see it in 2-5 days. If you’re measuring 3-day ROI on both markets, US will always look broken compared to Russia.
Have you built market-specific attribution windows?
Also—and this is important—are the influencers actually comparable? A Russian micro-influencer with 50K followers in a niche might have more relevant audience overlap with your product than a US creator with 150K followers in a broader category. Audience relevance isn’t reflected in engagement rate.
From the creator side, I think there’s also a behavioral thing happening. Russian creators tend to have more direct, transactional relationships with their audiences—“Buy this, use this code, get this discount.” US creators, especially micro-influencers, often lean more into storytelling and brand fit rather than direct conversion.
So when you work with a Russian creator, they might be actively encouraging their audience to click and buy. A US creator might be more subtle about it. Same 8% engagement, totally different intent.
It might not be the metrics—it might be the creator mindset. Have you talked to your US creators about whether they’re intentionally optimizing for engagement versus conversion?
I’ve run into this exact problem. Here’s what I found: the US market has way more noise and competition for attention. In Russia, if you’re in the right niche community, a creator’s recommendation carries weight. In the US, there’s so much content that the same engagement number means a smaller fraction of the audience actually took action.
Also, privacy tracking is different. IDFA changes on iOS hit US advertisers harder because our audience is more iOS-heavy. Russian campaigns have better data continuity. So your attribution on US campaigns might genuinely be under-reporting actual ROI.
What I did was build a blended model: I use last-click attribution for Russia (works well there) but multi-touch attribution for the US. Completely different tracking approaches. Now I can actually compare apples to apples.
What’s your current attribution model?