Podcast · podcast episode
D2C Dialogues #2: Influencer marketing as a performance channel
Stellaris Venture Partners (with Apaksh Gupta, One Impression, and Sarvesh Shashi, Sarva) · Stellaris Venture Partners Free Intermediate India
Most influencer content is agency sales copy, so we picked an Indian D2C conversation where the guests run an influencer platform and a consumer brand and talk about creator spend as a performance channel, not a branding nicety. You get the honest version of when seeding and creator deals actually moved the number versus when they just felt good. Listen as a starting point for how operators here think about the tradeoff, then hold their claims against your own tracked data.
- Treated as performance, creator spend gets judged on cost per acquisition and payback, the same bar you would hold your ads to, not on likes.
- Product seeding to many smaller creators can be cheaper to test than one big paid deal, but only if you tag each one so you can see what converted.
- Operators here weigh audience trust, not just reach, since a smaller creator whose followers actually buy can beat a costlier name that just drives views.
