I’m at the point where my leadership team is finally comfortable with a real investment in influencer and UGC across both Russia and the US. Which is great. But now I’m facing a problem I didn’t anticipate: how do I intelligently split budget between the two when I have limited historical data on what works in each market?
Right now, I’m basically splitting 50/50, which feels safer than making a big bet on one market. But I have a nagging sense that this is lazy thinking. There’s probably a smarter way to route the money based on actual performance benchmarks, market size, audience behavior, or something else entirely.
The data I do have: Russia’s influencer market is dense and competitive—you get more volume for your money but lower barrier to entry also means more noise. The US market has fewer creators but higher production value and audience quality tends to be more consistent if you vet properly. Different dynamics.
I’ve started looking at: RUB spend per 1000 impressions vs USD spend per 1000 impressions. Cost of creator engagement. Conversion rates by creator tier (micro vs macro). But I’m not confident I’m looking at the right metrics to make the allocation decision.
What framework are you actually using? Are you allocating based on market size, historical performance, strategic importance, or something else? And how often do you revisit that allocation—monthly, quarterly, or only after you have enough data to be statistically significant?
I want to be smarter about this than just splitting the difference.
This is exactly the kind of question where data should drive the decision, but most people end up with gut allocation anyway. Let me share how I’ve approached this.
First, forget 50/50. That’s not a strategy, it’s a hedge.
What I do: I run a proportional ROI allocation model. Here’s the framework:
- Define a pilot period (I use 6-8 weeks minimum).
- Split budget roughly 40/60 or 50/50 for the pilot, but track everything obsessively.
- For each market, calculate: Cost per acquisition (CPA), Return on ad spend (ROAS), Lifetime value contribution, Time to profitability.
- After the pilot, allocate future budget proportional to which market is actually outperforming.
The key is: don’t try to predict which market will be better. Run the experiment, measure, then scale the winner.
In my experience, Russia often wins on velocity (faster customer acquisition, higher transaction volume), while the US often wins on unit economics (higher AOV, better repeat purchase rate). So sometimes the ROI allocation isn’t obvious—it depends on whether your business model favors volume or margin.
One important caveat: if one market is a strategic priority even if it’s underperforming short-term, your allocation formula needs to account for that. But that should be a conscious choice, not a default.
What’s your business model—are you optimizing for volume, margin, or strategic market entry?
Also, the metrics you mentioned—spend per 1000 impressions, engagement rate, conversion by creator tier—those are all useful, but they’re input metrics, not output metrics. What I’d focus on instead: What’s the actual customer acquisition cost in each market? What’s the quality of customers acquired? Are they repeat customers or one-time?
Those output metrics are what should drive allocation, not the inputs.
Анна’s framework is solid. I’d add a strategic layer on top of it.
Before you build a pure ROI allocation model, ask: What are you trying to accomplish in each market? If the US is about building brand presence and Russia is about driving revenue, then your allocation prioritizes different KPIs in each region. You might allocate more budget to US brand-building even if ROAS is lower, if that’s the strategic objective.
Here’s my process:
- Define strategic goals per market (growth, profitability, market penetration, etc.).
- Allocate budget to support those goals.
- Within each market, optimize sub-allocation by performance metrics.
This prevents the trap of oversimplifying to “allocate by ROI” when the strategic context is more nuanced.
One other thing: I always reserve 10-15% of budget for experimentation—new creator types, new platforms, new audience segments. This fund sits outside the main allocation and allows you to discover new high-performing approaches rather than just amortizing historical winners.
What’s the strategic goal driving your US investment? Is it market entry, or revenue generation, or brand building?
From the agency side, I’d add: market maturity matters more than most people think.
If Russia is a mature market for you with a year+ of campaign history, you have rich data to allocate. If the US is nascent, you have limited data, so you need to overspend early to generate learnings.
I often recommend a timeline-based allocation: Months 1-3, invest more in the nascent market to build data. Months 4-6, start allocating based on early performance signals. Months 7+, lock into ROI-optimized allocation.
This prevents the mistake of being too conservative in new markets where you need to experiment more aggressively.
Also, don’t forget to account for timeline. US campaigns sometimes take longer to move from awareness to conversion. If you’re measuring ROI on a 30-day window, US might look worse than Russia just because the sales cycle is longer. Adjust your measurement window by market if this is true for your business.
I’m wrestling with this exact problem right now as we scale across Europe. One thing I’ve learned: the 50/50 split feels fair but it’s strategically useless.
What’ve been thinking about: What if you allocate based on addressable market size? Russia’s e-commerce market is X billion, US is Y billion. Maybe your allocation should roughly match the market opportunity, adjusted for competitive density.
Also: what’s your brand’s current market share in each country? If you’re 0.1% in Russia but only 0.01% in the US, should you allocate different amounts? Probably.
I’ve started building a simple model with: market size, competitive landscape, current share, strategic priority, and pilot ROI. Allocation falls out of that. It’s not perfect, but it’s more defensible than 50/50.
How much market research have you done on addressable market size and your penetration in each region?
I approach this from the partnership angle. In my experience, smart allocation also means allocating to where you have the best partners and relationships.
If you have an amazing agency partner in Russia who you trust deeply, and you’re still figuring out US partnerships, allocate a bit more to the Russia market early. Let your best partners execute bigger budgets. Use that to generate case studies and momentum. Then, as you build US partnerships, gradually rebalance.
This isn’t sexy from a pure ROI perspective, but operationally it makes campaigns run better. Better partners = better execution = better results, even at the same budget level.
So my question: How confident are you in your execution partners in each market? That should factor into allocation.
From the creator perspective, I’ll say this: the budget allocation that works best is the one that lets creators actually do good work.
If you’re splitting $100K 50/50 between markets, you might end up doing 10 campaigns in Russia and only 5 in the US. That means US creators have bigger budgets per campaign, which gives them room to actually produce good content instead of rushing.
Or vice versa: in Russia, a smaller budget spread across more creators might actually perform better because the market rewards volume and velocity.
What I mean is: think about how the budget actually flows to creators, not just how it flows to markets. The structure of how you spend matters as much as how much you spend.