When brands collaborate with creators, they often struggle to measure true business impact beyond likes and follows. The Cirqle, a Netherlands-based creator marketing platform, addresses this fundamental challenge by focusing on what matters most: revenue. As a Meta and TikTok partner serving 1.2 million creators, the company leads with a performance-driven approach to measuring and optimizing brand-creator partnerships, leveraging first-party data only.

From Agency to Tech Platform: Building The Cirqle

The Cirqle is the third startup of Steven Lammertink, its founder & CEO, who previously worked at Adobe’s Advanced Technology Labs in Silicon Valley. His entry into the creator economy began with a core challenge: measuring the true impact of creator partnerships on true business outcomes.

“I’ve been in the influencer space for 10 years with The Cirqle. We started as an agency and later morphed into a software platform,” Steven explains. “During my time in the U.S., I observed that it was ahead of Europe in terms of innovations, technologies, and technological advancement. We developed this platform because measurement and scale were real problems in seeing creators’ impact on any business.”

The shift from agency to software company emerged from extensive hands-on experience. “We used all our learnings from the agency and put them into our product,” Steven notes. “We also got a lot of feedback from our customers: things they were missing, data they were not seeing, and easy-to-use navigation. That’s what we’ve built. One that’s centered around business outcomes.”

Measuring True Business Impact

The Cirqle’s development stemmed from limitations in traditional creator marketing metrics. “I always get frustrated by influencer agencies that only speak about impressions and reach,” Steven explains. “I can’t pay my staff if I run a campaign that has driven 100 million impressions.”

“A lot of the industry is still thinking about finding a creator who’ll drive so many sales without looking at the fundamentals,” Steven observes. “We’ve looked at the numbers and the data for 10 years, and we can build strategies that last rather than build a strategy around a piece of viral content with 20 creators we hope will be successful.”

This emphasis on bottom-line results shapes The Cirqle’s entire approach. “Paid social integrations and paid social capabilities. Those are our key differentiators,” Steven points out.

The platform integrates with paid social capabilities, enabling brands to amplify creator content and measure sales impact. “We have super deep integrations with paid social networks, unlike anyone in the market. You can essentially amplify creators and channel their content and their audience by allocating a budget to those channels and creators and content by leveraging our AI,” says Steven.

Technical Innovation in Creator Marketing

The Cirqle’s core platform capabilities include:

AI-Powered Performance Prediction

Before brands initiate creator partnerships, The Cirqle’s AI provides detailed performance projections. “For every single creator, you can see a ROAS estimation before contracting the creator for the amount they charge,” Steven explains. “I can accept and contract or negotiate a counteroffer, which is also built into the software. It de-risks my investment because I know if the creator generated 7.7x ROAS on average historically, in other brand partnerships.”

First-Party Data Integration

The Cirqle relies exclusively on verified first-party data. “We don’t do any scraping. We’re one of the few platforms approved as Meta’s marketing partners,” Steven notes. “This already makes a huge difference because you’re looking at actual data and not at some kind of estimate of a 5% sample size.”

Automated Workflow Management

“I can build a brief, I can preview my brief, I can create any type of campaign with any type of objective on any social network that matters,” Steven details. “Applications, contracts, shipping – everything is automated through the platform. You can even see what the content looks like if you turn it into an ad within the platform. However, most advertisers come to us because they want bottom-funnel performance and the ability to scale that performance.”

Cross-Channel Performance Tracking

“Not just on Meta or on TikTok, but comparing the two and seeing how much revenue that piece of creative brought into the business? Did it come from TikTok or Instagram? Can I allocate more of the budget to it to scale performance even further?” Steven explains.

Real-Time Analytics and Optimization

“Making sure that the data you see is the same as what you would see inside your ads manager,” Steven emphasizes. “I can sort by ROAS, I can track everything performance-wise. How does my organic program compare to my paid social program? If you have a license to use it as an ad, you can see all the content they have ever posted for you. What’s a CPA? What’s a CPC? What’s a CPM? What’s a ROAS? What are revenue ads? Everything is included.”

Creator Tools

“They have their version of this platform. They can track how they’re growing their account and all the different stats that matter,” Steven shares. “Most importantly, they can apply for brand partnerships. Creating a level playing field between creators and brands is super important to us and our business. Without this level of transparency, it wouldn’t work.”

A Case Study

Steven highlights the effectiveness of The Cirqle’s approach in its work with major brands. Its partnership with a large fashion retailer demonstrates how paid social amplification of creator content drives significant revenue.

“That they’ve allocated nearly €100,000 in ad spend and generated 10x in revenue,” Steven shares about the campaign. “A single post has generated almost €300k.”

The data highlights the difference between organic and paid creator content performance. “If you look at where the sales and revenue is coming from, it’s all paid partnership ads,” Steven emphasizes. “That’s why organic influencer marketing agencies always report on impressions, engagement, and sometimes a bit of click.”

The platform’s AI-powered insights identified optimal creators for the campaign. “For every single creator, we can see ROAS estimation before we contract them,” Steven explains. “The green bulb indicates I’m running an ad with her content. I can accept, contract, or negotiate a counteroffer built into the software.”

AI and Creator Commerce

Steven anticipates significant changes through AI adoption. “AI will change the outlook of my company and every other that works with the software and The Cirqle by 10x at the minimum,” he predicts. 

“Campaign brief writing—that’s something that our AI does. If the customer goes in, they hit create campaign with AI, and the entire campaign is created for you. And I’ll tell you, the results are out of this world.”

The Cirqle continues expanding beyond creator discovery. “You can build so many different businesses from this,” Steven shares, recently launching Blake, a new venture named after his daughter, focused on building businesses around creators. “We know what creators can sell and what creators bring in revenue, not just impressions and engagement. Many folks have a business idea but don’t know how to build it.”

“The most exciting part of my job is helping brands identify those creators who can drive revenue and, on the other hand, helping creators make a real living by working through our platform,” Steven concludes.