Bryce Coombe.
Hypetap’s MD, Bryce Coombe
Recently my AiMCO colleague Sharyn Smith rightly pointed out the staggering size and scale of the influencer market. She’s spot on, the industry has matured into a multi-billion-dollar powerhouse. And for an enormous channel that continues to grow, the upside and downside are both significant and need careful navigation.
In my opinion there is no doubt that the conversation must shift. The "new news" isn't just the size of the sector, it's the gap between brands that treat influencer marketing as a tactical add-on and those that treat it as part of an essential brand infrastructure.
The cost of getting it “almost” right
When you treat influencer marketing as a surface-level exercise or ‘bottom of the media plan’ tactical channel, the downside isn't just a low ROI, it’s a high-risk profile. Three major red flags in the market recently should serve as a wake-up call for every brand, including:
● ACCC enforcement: Just this week, the ACCC issued its first financial penalty for hidden influencer deals against Photobook Shop. In addition to a significant financial penalty of $39,600, the damage to the brand and the reduction in trust the audience have in the brand and the influencers themselves are significant.
● Authenticity is a minimum: Who can forget last years’ roaster over Carrie Bickmore and Fifi Box’s Kmart collaboration. The audience could smell the insincerity from a mile away. When creators don't look like they know where the trolleys are kept, the brand authenticity and credibility takes a hit.
● Licensing pitfalls: Also last year, Warner Music Group filed a multi-million-dollar lawsuit against Crumbl Cookies. Using audio without commercial licensing is a significant risk, so if your influencer agency isn't vetting every second of audio for IP infringement, they aren't managing your campaign or exposure.
To be a high performing brand in the Influencer sector requires a level of rigour that in-house teams or generalist agencies lack, which is why AiMCO exists. If your agency partner isn't adhering to the AiMCO Code of Practice, your brand is operating with a high-risk profile.
From vanity to velocity
The upside of Influencer, however, is where it gets exciting. When you move beyond vanity metrics like Followers, Views and Engagement you reveal the true impact and opportunity in Influencer.
Our internal Hypetap Intelligence data shows that the most successful brands have moved toward "Visibility over Virality". We are no longer chasing the viral spike that can evaporate in hours. Instead, we use deeper metrics like Sentiment, Share of Voice, Share of Model, Conversion and more, as Commercially based effectiveness measures.
For example, when we worked with online fashion marketplace, Depop, to grow their US market share, we didn't just look for famous faces. We engineered a strategy to dominate the category conversation around resale and sustainability. The result? 9.5 million organic impressions and a majority share of voice during their peak month, which converted directly into new user sign-ups.
Influencer marketing is no longer a question of if you invest, but how intelligently you do it. In a channel where culture moves faster than media cycles, brands need to be deliberate for success.
For CMOs, this means treating influencer not as an experimental line item, but as a performance channel with brand-building power. Because the real risk for brands isn’t that influencer marketing doesn’t work, it’s that it works too well, so when it’s done poorly it amplifies everything: your message, your missteps, your credibility.
The opportunity, however, is equally big. Brands that move from chasing attention to engineering influence will define the conversation. In a market this powerful, “almost right” is no longer good enough.