Influencer campaign ROI: CPM, cost per click, cost per sale and ROAS explained
“Did the campaign work?” is the question every creator collaboration ends with. Views and likes don’t answer it, because they don’t include what you paid. Five ratios do. Here’s what each one means, how to calculate it, and where people go wrong.
Want the numbers for one creator right now? Use the free influencer ROI calculator.
Start with the full cost
Cost is more than the creator’s fee. Add:
- the fee itself;
- the value of any product you sent, at what it costs you, not the retail price;
- shipping, and any agency or platform fees.
A gifted collaboration with no fee still has a cost. Leave it out and every gifted creator looks infinitely profitable.
The five numbers
Take a creator who cost 680 in total (600 fee plus 80 in product). Their reel got 52,000 views, 820 link clicks, 41 sales and 2,460 in revenue.
| Measure | Formula | Example | Answers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per 1,000 views (CPM) | cost ÷ views × 1,000 | 13.08 | How cheaply did we buy attention? |
| Cost per click (CPC) | cost ÷ clicks | 0.83 | How cheaply did we buy visits? |
| Cost per sale (CPA) | cost ÷ sales | 16.59 | What did each customer cost? |
| Return on ad spend (ROAS) | revenue ÷ cost | 3.62x | How much came back for each unit spent? |
| Return on investment (ROI) | (revenue − cost) ÷ cost | 262% | How much did we gain on top? |
ROAS and ROI are often mixed up. A ROAS of 1.00x means you got your money back. An ROI of 0% means the same thing.
In a spreadsheet
Keep creators on one tab (with their total cost) and results on another, one row per post. Then build a summary row per creator. With creator names in column A of the Results tab and views in column D:
=SUMIFS(Results!D:D,Results!A:A,A6)Do the same for clicks, sales and revenue. The ratios guard against dividing by zero, for creators whose content isn’t live yet:
CPM: =IF(N(D6)=0,"",B6/D6*1000)
CPC: =IF(N(E6)=0,"",B6/E6)
CPA: =IF(N(F6)=0,"",B6/F6)
ROAS: =IF(N(B6)=0,"",G6/B6)For the whole campaign, add up costs and results first and then divide. Averaging each creator’s ROAS gives a small creator with one lucky sale as much weight as your biggest partnership.
Counting sales honestly
Sales come from discount codes or tracked links, and both miss some buyers. People see a video on their phone and buy days later on a laptop without the code. So:
- Use both a code and a link per creator, and count a sale once if both show up.
- Read results after a fixed window, for example 14 days after posting, and use the same window for every creator.
- Treat ROAS as a floor. The true return is usually somewhat higher than what you can track, but it is the same blind spot for every creator, so the comparison between them still holds.
Deciding who to book again
Sort creators by cost per sale if you sell online, or by CPM if the goal was awareness. Then look at the outliers. A creator with a high CPM but a low cost per sale has a small, loyal audience that buys, which is often the best booking for a small brand. A creator with a cheap CPM and no sales reached a lot of people who weren’t interested.