The ANA Influencer Marketing Standards provide an industry benchmark that helps brands measure if they are getting the results they want from campaigns.

Who is Michael Lambie?

Michael Lambie is the Head of Global Measurement and Insights at CreatorIQ, the leading influencer marketing software trusted by powering industry leaders, such as AB InBev, Disney, LVMH, Sephora, and Unilever. 

“My heart and soul has been in metrics and data and measurement, but being the first employee [at CreatorIQ], I couldn’t have my position be that because we didn’t have anything to measure yet… So, I worked in product for the first four years as Head of Product, and then I switched over to Head of [Global] Measurement and Insights.”

Before his time at CreatorIQ, Michael Lambie worked in market research in television, which exposed him to many different sectors, like green lighting and development, digital lab research, brand tracking, and customer segmentation. 

“Ultimately, what I found was that I love this world of trying to make content better and advertising better, but I didn’t love the inputs of surveys and focus groups as much… I want to pull all this data from behavioral data because I think it’s all out there, and we can get it from people unaided and [from] people we otherwise wouldn’t be able to get to take surveys and [partiipate in] focus groups.”

Developing the ANA Influencer Marketing Standards

Michael Lambie shares that CreatorIQ has focused on growing enterprise-level clients, which has led to increased access to mature business intelligence and marketing research over the years. 

This data led to exciting conversations about further developing the influencer marketing industry by setting measurement standards. 

Michael Lambie provides the example of views on different platforms. For example, a video view on YouTube is only counted when someone watches the video for 30 seconds or more or watches the entire video if the video is less than 30 seconds. However, a view on Facebook is counted after a viewer watches a video for three seconds. 

The difference between these two measurements is enormous. However, they are called the same thing, which can cause confusion for marketers and advertisers. 

CreatorIQ and their portfolio of brands, including Unilever, began developing data to clarify social media measurements and create standardized benchmarks to address this issue. 

Michael began working with Unilever and provided them with an outline of different measures throughout the market to address this problem. On behalf of Unilever, the ANA Influencer Marketing Standards were published. 

Recently, CreatorIQ announced they are the first software platform to comply with these standards fully.  

ANA Influencer Marketing Standards

When asked why the Association of National Advertiser’s (ANA) Influencer Marketing Standards are crucial to the market, Michael shares the following: 

“I think influencer marketing hass proven that it’s relevant and it’s persistent. It survived the comings and goings of different social networks.”

Since influencer marketing is not going anywhere, it’s crucial that there is a measurable framework for social networks and their metrics. Another reason the ANA Influencer Marketing Standards are essential is brands and influencers need to understand the impact and ROI of content. 

For example, Michael shares, “When I was at 20th Century Fox, we worked with a couple of the MCNS [multi-channel networks], and they would come into the room and… they’d pitch us all this really cool viral content that they’re making that we loved and I’d say, “Okay, did that help the ticket sales in Berlin? Or what was the ROI on this.?”

Michael Lambie shares that often the MCNs would respond by saying that everyone was talking about the content. However, this isn’t enough data for a brand looking to convert sales using influencer marketing. 

Set standards can help influencers and brands understand their content’s data-driven measurements and results. 

The standards also allow creators to be pickier with who they work with because they can be confident knowing that their content is above average in engagement, ROI, etc. 

CreatorIQ’s ANA Influencer Marketing Standards Integration

CreatorIQ is a leading influencer marketing software that allows brands to streamline their workflow, run influencer campaigns, and assess data from all their social platforms. 

The ANA Influencer Marketing Standards are now fully integrated into the software so that users can assess if their content and campaigns are hitting these industry benchmarks. 

“Our tool is set up so that our clients can use it and adhere to the [ANA Influencer Marketing] Standards… If you measure, if you’re pulling data, if you’re running this campaign, these are the views, these are the impressions. Here’s the engagement rate you need to think about, and here’s how much you spent. We can calculate their effective CPMS, CPEs, and CCPs.”

CreatorIQ tools also show brands how their paid media is performing compared to organic content. Working directly with social platforms has also given CreatorIQ a significant advantage over competing software because of their access to exclusive data that other companies don’t have access to. 

“The whole goal is we love [the ANA Influencer Marketing] Standards, and we want to make it as easy as possible for our clients to adopt them. We probably have a ton of clients who have no idea… or no awareness of the standards, and I’m completely fine with that because they [the clients] just know that it’s working and it’s working the right way, and they can trust the data.”

Future Developments

Creators are a full funneling marketing tool, so CreatorIQ is working to develop bottom-of-the-funnel metrics as well to continue fleshing out influencer marketing standards. 

“The pandemic turned almost every company into at least a little bit of direct consumer e-commerce companies, so that’s been a huge area of growth for us too. There’s measuring standards there as well [and that] is really important to us.”

One of the best things about developing influencer marketing standards is that brands and influencers can ensure they are measuring ROI correctly. 

“It [the standards] allow us to make benchmarks that are meaningful, that we can also share with our clients so that they have some direction. People who are starting from scratch or don’t know what numbers you should be hitting or what your competition looks like, we can provide additional transparency around that and provide goals and targets for clients to hit, whether they’re competing against themselves, a competitor, or an industry benchmark.”

The CreatorIQ integration of the ANA Influencer Marketing Standards provide additional context to brands and marketers looking to assess their current campaigns or quickly begin new influencer programs. 

“We have projections and forecasting tools, and it really helps us to figure out and set up how things should work.”