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The Behavioral Barometer
The latest and greatest from your human experience guides at Element Human
The creator economy has outgrown its metrics, leaving brands flying blind with massive budgets and no way to measure what actually drives influence: emotional connection.
Creator marketing is no longer a novelty—it’s a line item. A big one. According to CreatorIQ, 70% of marketers say creator marketing delivers their highest ROI. But here’s the kicker: the same percentage say they struggle to measure it.
We’re in a measurement crisis. Brands are investing more than ever in creators, but the metrics they’re using—reach, impressions, click-through rates—are relics of a different era. They tell us what happened, not why it happened. They track behavior, not belief. And in a world where influence is increasingly emotional, that’s a problem.
If you’re not measuring what's happening in the mind of the consumer, how they feel, you’re flying blind. This is the era of emotional ROI.
The creator economy has outgrown its metrics. There, I said it. We’ve moved from the early days of “influencer” marketing—where follower count was king—to a more nuanced, creator-led ecosystem. Today’s creators are not just distribution channels; they’re cultural operators, brand collaborators, and community builders. But we’re still measuring them like they’re banner ads.
This disconnect is costing brands. As WARC’s “Influenceability” research shows, optimizing for reach alone leaves 75% of campaign effectiveness on the table. Why? Because reach doesn’t equal resonance. And resonance—how deeply a message lands emotionally—is what drives memory, brand lift, and ultimately, action.
The industry is finally catching up to the difference between influencers, creators, and makers. Influencers trade on audience access. Creators trade on content quality. Makers push the boundaries of what content even is—think AI avatars and AR-native storytelling. But regardless of the label, the real shift is from performance to perception. From clicks to connection. From reach to resonance.
As Digiday reports, brands are increasingly distinguishing between creators who can drive short-term sales and those who can build long-term brand equity. The most effective creator campaigns do both—but only if you’re measuring the right things.
So what is emotional ROI? It’s the ability to quantify how people feel when they encounter your content—and how those feelings predict future behavior. It’s not just about whether someone watched a video. It’s about whether they felt joy, surprise, trust, or even confusion. Because those emotions are the precursors to action.
Neuroscience has long shown that emotional engagement is a leading indicator of memory encoding, brand recall, and purchase intent. In other words: if you want people to remember your brand, you need to make them feel something. And yet, most creator campaigns don’t measure emotional response at all.
This beautiful research PDF is brought to us by our friends at MIT, Affectiva, and Northeastern University. The research strongly suggests that emotions in advertising, particularly as measured by facial coding, do drive sales. It's not just about whether an ad evokes emotion, but how and which emotions are evoked, and how those emotions change over time. Using tools like facial coding can provide valuable insights that go beyond traditional surveys to better predict ad effectiveness.
Take Ford’s “Charge Around the Globe” campaign, where YouTuber Lexie Alford drove an electric Explorer across 27 countries. The campaign wasn’t just about showcasing EV capabilities—it was about inspiring a sense of adventure, possibility, and trust in a new kind of mobility.
Ford didn’t just track views. They measured emotional response to the content—how it made people feel about the brand, the product, and the future of EVs. The result? A campaign that didn’t just perform—it resonated. Now imagine applying that same emotional intelligence to every creator campaign.
Let’s get tactical. Here’s how to bring emotional ROI into your creator marketing workflow:
This study investigates the role of social media platform affordances (visibility and engagement) in influencer marketing and their impact on followers' information seeking, affective relationship building (trust), and purchase intention.
The creator economy is maturing. So must our measurement. In 2025, the brands that win won’t be the ones with the biggest budgets or the flashiest influencers. They’ll be the ones who understand that influence is emotional—and who have the tools to measure it.
Emotional ROI isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the missing metric. And it’s the key to making every creator dollar count. So here’s the challenge: before your next campaign goes live, ask yourself—not just what your audience will do, but how they’ll feel. Because in the end, that’s what they’ll remember.
"You guys are excellent partners, and we appreciate the innovativeness."
"We are proud to partner with Element Human to delve even deeper into the emotional impact of creator content on audiences and offer actionable insights, empowering brands to maximise the impact of their influencer marketing campaigns."
"Element Human has been an invaluable partner in showing the business impact creators can have on brand performance."
"They’re responsive, collaborative, and genuinely invested in our success, a rare combination that has made them a trusted partner of mine across multiple companies."
"Creator Economy PSA... Vanity metrics surpassed long ago. Effectiveness, impact and ROI are all measurable with partners like Nielsen, Element Human and Circana."
"Element Human was not just key for the BBC’s project but also was engaging and a great learning experience for me personally!"
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