By 2025, influencer marketing had moved past experimentation. Brands were no longer asking whether creators worked. They were asking harder questions: how to structure spend, how to evaluate impact, and how to scale without losing efficiency.
Across multiple mixed-objective campaigns run by TIMA in 2025, one thing became clear. Performance did not come from visibility alone. It came from alignment, format choice, and disciplined execution.
This article is a data-led wrap of selected influencer campaigns run by TIMA in 2025, partially anonymised, with mixed objectives across awareness, engagement, and early-stage performance. The goal is not to showcase perfection, but to share what actually worked, what didn’t, and what brands should take forward.
2025 in Context: A Shift in How Brands Evaluated Influencer Marketing
At the start of the year, many brands still approached influencer campaigns with outdated expectations. High reach was assumed to equal high value. Engagement rate was treated as a universal benchmark. Conversion was expected even in awareness-led campaigns.
By mid-year, those assumptions began to break down.
Brands started demanding clearer performance logic. Not every campaign needed clicks. Not every creator needed to convert. What mattered was whether each campaign delivered value relative to its objective.
That shift shaped how TIMA structured campaigns throughout the year.
Campaign Overview: A Mixed-Objective Year
Across selected 2025 campaigns reviewed in this wrap:
- Campaign objectives were mixed, spanning awareness, engagement, and early performance signals
- Platforms included Instagram and TikTok, with a strong bias toward short-form video and live formats
- Creator tiers ranged from niche micro-creators to high-reach personalities
- Spend was intentionally varied to test cost efficiency across formats and market.
Rather than optimise every campaign for the same outcome, campaigns were designed to answer specific questions:
- Can engagement-heavy campaigns deliver brand value without clicks?
- Does higher creator cost always correlate with stronger returns?
- Which formats scale awareness efficiently across markets?
Insight 1: High Engagement Does Not Require Conversion to Deliver Value
One of the strongest-performing campaigns of the year was an engagement-led collaboration with four creators in the gaming and entertainment space.
Campaign snapshot
- Creator spend: approximately USD 16,000
- Total views: 1.7 million
- Total engagements: 294,000+
- Average engagement rate: 2.08%
- Video engagement rate: 17.73%
- Earned media value (EMV): approximately USD 75,000
- CPM: USD 9.8
Despite strong engagement and view volume, the campaign recorded no direct clicks.
This was not a failure.
The campaign was structured primarily for awareness and engagement, not conversion. The performance demonstrated a recurring 2025 pattern: when creators are given space to produce platform-native content, engagement can significantly outperform spend, even without performance links.
For brands, the takeaway is simple. Not all high-value campaigns will produce immediate clicks. Engagement, when tied to the right audience and format, can still generate disproportionate brand value.
Insight 2: Cost Efficiency Can Outperform Engagement Rates
Another campaign focused on regional visibility across multiple African markets, working with a distributed list of creators.
Campaign snapshot
- Creator spend: approximately USD 1,600
- Total views: 1.5 million
- Total engagements: 9,800+
- Average engagement rate: 1.6%
- Earned media value: approximately USD 30,000
- CPM: USD 1.1
On paper, engagement rates were modest. But cost efficiency told a different story.
With a CPM significantly lower than most paid media benchmarks, the campaign delivered strong awareness value relative to spend. This reinforced a critical insight from 2025: engagement rate alone is a weak metric when removed from cost context.
For market entry or broad awareness objectives, cost efficiency often matters more than surface-level interaction metrics.
Insight 3: Format Choice Had a Bigger Impact Than Platform Choice
Across campaigns, performance variance was less about whether content ran on Instagram or TikTok, and more about how the content was delivered.
Live streaming and short-form video consistently outperformed static or heavily scripted formats.
In one live-streamed campaign:
- A single creator session generated over 370,000 views
- Engagement was driven through real-time interaction rather than post-comment volume
- Click and conversion expectations were intentionally de-emphasised
In contrast, creators producing short-form video paired with story amplification consistently delivered stronger cumulative results, particularly when content felt unscripted and contextually relevant.
The lesson for brands in 2026 is clear. Platform selection matters, but format selection matters more. Campaigns that respect how audiences consume content outperform those that force traditional advertising logic into creator environments.
Insight 4: Influencer Selection Is a Multiplier, Not a Guarantee
One of the most important observations from 2025 came from multi-creator campaigns where outcomes varied widely.
Within the same campaign window:
- One creator delivered EMV exceeding USD 3.5 million from a single collaboration
- Another delivered under USD 3,000 in EMV despite similar content requirements
- Engagement and click performance varied sharply even when follower counts were comparable
This variance reinforced a hard truth. Follower size does not equal performance predictability.
What separated high-performing creators from underperformers was not reach, but audience alignment, content credibility, and execution quality.
For brands, this underscores the importance of vetting creators beyond surface metrics. Selection should be treated as a strategic decision, not a numbers game.
Insight 5: Mixed Objectives Require Mixed Evaluation Models
Many 2025 campaigns struggled early because brands attempted to evaluate every campaign using the same yardstick.
Awareness campaigns were judged on clicks. Engagement campaigns were judged on sales. Performance campaigns were judged on reach.
The most successful campaigns were those evaluated according to their primary objective.
- Awareness campaigns prioritised CPM, reach efficiency, and EMV
- Engagement campaigns prioritised video interaction and qualitative audience response
- Performance-adjacent campaigns tracked clicks and downstream signals, but only when structure supported it
This approach reduced friction, improved brand satisfaction, and allowed creators to execute without misaligned pressure.
What 2025 Taught Us About Influencer Marketing
Across all reviewed campaigns, several principles held consistently:
- Influencer marketing works best when objectives are clearly defined and realistically evaluated
- Cost efficiency often delivers more insight than vanity metrics
- Format and execution quality matter more than platform choice
- Creator selection remains the single biggest performance variable
- Not every campaign needs to convert to be successful
Most importantly, influencer marketing cannot be treated as a one-size-fits-all channel. It demands strategy, flexibility, and an understanding of what each campaign is designed to achieve.
What This Means for 2026 Without Turning This Into a Prediction Piece
Rather than predict trends, 2025 offers something more useful: direction.
The patterns observed across TIMA’s campaigns point to how influencer marketing will be structured moving forward.
In 2026, brands will not be asking whether influencer marketing works. They will be asking where it fits, what role it plays, and how to evaluate it without distortion.
Campaigns will be more modular. Awareness, engagement, and performance will be separated more deliberately, not bundled into unrealistic all-in-one briefs.
Creator selection will become more conservative, but also more intentional. Fewer creators, better alignment, clearer expectations.
Measurement will continue to move away from surface metrics toward context-aware evaluation. CPM, EMV, and engagement quality will matter more than raw reach or follower counts.
And perhaps most importantly, brands will increasingly treat influencer marketing as a long-term brand lever, not a short-term growth hack.
These are not predictions. They are extensions of what already worked.
Closing Perspective
2025 did not produce perfect campaigns. It produced clearer thinking.
The strongest influencer campaigns were not the loudest. They were the most disciplined. They respected the platform, the creator, and the objective.
For TIMA, the year reinforced a simple principle: influencer marketing delivers its best results when strategy leads and metrics follow, not the other way around.
As the industry moves forward, the brands that win will not be the ones chasing trends. They will be the ones building campaigns that know exactly what success looks like before the first post goes live.
