I’ve been running influencer campaigns for our brand in both Russia and the US for about six months now, and I’m realizing I have almost no idea if they’re actually working.
In Russia, it’s relatively straightforward: we track sales driven by unique codes, monitor website traffic from their links, measure engagement directly. The data pipeline is clean enough.
But in the US? Everything gets messy. Different platforms have different tracking capabilities, creators have different expectations around what gets measured, and there’s this weird gap between engagement metrics and actual business results.
I ran one campaign with a US micro-influencer, got 50K impressions and solid engagement, but traced conversions back and… basically nothing. Meantime, a Russian creator with half the impressions drove 3x the sales.
So here’s what I’m stuck on: Are the platforms just fundamentally different in how they convert? Or am I measuring the wrong things? How do other people even think about ROI when their markets behave so differently?
I’ve heard the hub has cross-market analytics features, but I’m not sure what questions I should even be asking the data. Does anyone have a framework that actually works for comparing campaign performance across markets? Or do you basically have to accept that US influencer campaigns work on different metrics than Russian ones?
Okay, this is exactly my wheelhouse. The short answer: yes, markets convert differently, but that’s not why your measurement is broken—it’s how you’re framing the metrics.
Here’s what I see constantly: brands measure Russian campaigns on direct conversion (code used, purchase made). They measure US campaigns on engagement (likes, comments, saves). You can’t compare apples to apples if you’re using different metrics.
What actually works: measure everything on the same framework, adjusted for market norms:
Tier 1 (Direct ROI):
- Promo code redemptions
- Direct link clicks → purchase
- LTV of customers acquired
Tier 2 (Engagement ROI):
- Average engagement rate vs. platform benchmark
- Click-through rate vs. segment average
- Sentiment analysis (are comments positive/negative?)
Tier 3 (Brand ROI):
- Brand search volume lift during/after campaign
- Social mentions and branded keywords
- Long-term customer retention
Now, here’s the market reality: Russian audiences often convert immediately (see ad, use code, buy). US audiences typically need multiple touchpoints before conversion. So a single US influencer campaign might drive low direct ROI but high awareness ROI.
My recommendation: track all three tiers for every campaign, regardless of market. Then you can actually compare apples to apples.
For your micro-influencer example: 50K impressions, solid engagement but low conversion could mean (a) wrong audience targeting, (b) weak CTA, (c) price point misalignment. Not necessarily that US influencer marketing doesn’t work.
How are you currently measuring the Russian campaigns? That’ll help me give you a more specific framework.
You’re hitting on a real problem: different markets have different conversion psychology.
In Russia, you often see direct-response behavior (“I like it, I buy it now”). In the US, there’s more consideration, more browsing, more comparison. That’s cultural, not a flaw in measurement.
Here’s the framework I use for cross-market ROI:
1. Establish baseline performance for each market independently:
- What’s the average conversion rate in US for influencer campaigns in your category?
- What’s the average in Russia?
- These are probably different, and that’s okay.
2. Normalize against those baselines:
- Campaign performance = (Your results / Market baseline) × 100
- If US market baseline is 2% conversion and your campaign hit 2.8%, that’s a +40% lift.
- If Russian market baseline is 5% and your campaign hit 6%, that’s a +20% lift.
- Now you can actually compare the two campaigns fairly.
3. Layer in attribution modeling:
- Direct conversions (they click the link and buy immediately)
- Assisted conversions (they click, leave, come back through organic search, then buy)
- Brand lift (they see it, don’t convert immediately, but company search volume increases)
Most brands ignore assisted and brand lift, which is a huge mistake for US campaigns.
4. Calculate true LTV ROI:
- Don’t just measure first purchase. Measure: is this customer more loyal? Do they have higher lifetime value? Do they refer others?
- US audiences are more likely to have high LTV if they actually convert, because they made a more deliberate choice.
The hub’s cross-market analytics should help you overlay all this data, but you need to set up the right KPIs first. Want to walk through what your current tracking system looks like?
From a partnership perspective, I see this issue all the time: brands and creators don’t agree upfront on what “success” actually means.
What I do now: before any campaign launches, I get all stakeholders (brand, creator, analyst) in a room (or Zoom) and we explicitly define success for that specific campaign.
Sometimes it’s sales. Sometimes it’s awareness. Sometimes it’s community building. We write it down, we number it, we agree on it.
Then, at the end of the campaign, we measure against those pre-agreed metrics—not whatever seems convenient afterward.
For cross-market campaigns specifically: I always recommend measuring on at least two dimensions:
- Market-agnostic metric (e.g., “growth vs. baseline”)
- Market-specific metric (e.g., “direct ROI in Russia, engagement ROI in US”)
That way you get both the comparison across markets AND the usefulness for each market.
Honestly, the hub’s analytics feature is good, but what you really need is a campaign briefing template that forces you to define success before you launch. That’s where 80% of the confusion lives.
Have you defined what success looks like for these campaigns with your creators?
We struggled with this massively. Our Russian customer base would see an influencer post and buy within 24 hours. Our US customer base would like the post, follow the brand, maybe bookmark it, then buy two weeks later during a sale.
We were measuring both on 7-day conversion window and thinking US influencers were underperforming.
What changed for us: extend your measurement window for US campaigns. Use a 30-day window instead of 7-day. Suddenly the ROI picture looked way different.
Also, implement UTM tracking, not just promo codes. Different platforms handle tracking differently, and UTMs give you visibility into the full customer journey.
One more thing: measure incrementality, not just direct attribution. Run a held-out control group (people who DON’T see the influencer post) and compare their behavior to the exposed group. That tells you what’s actually driven by the campaign vs. what would’ve happened anyway.
It’s more work to set up, but it’s the only way to truly compare cross-market performance.
Are you currently tracking any holdout groups or doing incrementality testing?
Real talk from the creator side: most brands aren’t giving creators the right tools to drive conversions anyway.
When a brand sends me a clear, branded link, an easy-to-use promo code, and tells me exactly what they want followers to do—that’s when conversions happen.
When a brand has a vague CTA or makes it hard for my followers to actually take action, that’s when engagement stays high but conversion sinks.
My point: some of your ROI measurement problem might be in the creative brief and CTA framing, not in market differences.
For measuring campaigns: I always ask brands “What’s the one action you actually care about?” If they say something vague like “awareness increase,” I know the campaign is going to struggle.
When they say “get 100 people to use code CHLOE50,” that’s clear, measurable, and way easier to execute on.
Maybe audit your brief templates? Make sure creators actually know what success looks like and have a frictionless way for followers to take action.
Also, different platforms have different CTA affordances. Instagram Stories allow swipe-ups and links. TikTok is link-in-bio. You need to optimize the CTA to the platform, not force the same CTA everywhere.
Do your briefs specify the CTA clearly for each platform?