A campaign can look inexpensive because the cost is incomplete, the reporting window is short, or the same results have been counted twice. Before comparing creator campaigns, make sure the numbers describe the same kind of work.
Shane’s Influencer Analytics gives you a place to record campaign budgets and actuals, see cost calculations and review workspace totals. You supply the data. It does not fetch platform results, attribute sales or calculate revenue-based returns. The workflow below helps you turn those entries into a comparison you can explain.
1. Define the reporting period before entering a campaign
Start with a small measurement note outside the tool. Record the campaign dates, the date results were checked, the platforms included and what counts as a conversion. Keep links to the underlying reports where your team can find them.
The campaign form has a name, product or brand, budget, stage, actual spend, impressions or views, engagements and conversions. It has no dedicated reporting-date, campaign-notes, revenue or creator-link field. Put a useful short label in the campaign name, such as “Autumn launch | Oct 1–14 | final,” and keep the full definition in your measurement note.
Be especially careful with the combined “Impressions / views” field. A video view and an impression may use different definitions. Choose one consistent basis for comparable campaigns and name it in the note. Adding unlike counts together does not make them equivalent.
2. Separate the budget from the cost that actually occurred
Budget is the plan. Actual spend is the value used in the campaign’s cost calculations and the workspace’s spend total. Entering a $1,000 budget does not make $1,000 of spend appear automatically.
Decide which costs belong in actual spend before comparing campaigns. Depending on your reporting purpose, you might include creator fees, production, usage rights, product costs and paid amplification. Apply the same rule to every campaign, and keep the breakdown in your source records. The tool stores one actual-spend number, not those separate categories.
The money fields are labeled USD. Convert costs consistently before combining them, and record the conversion method elsewhere. Do not enter a mixture of currencies and treat the resulting dollar total as a meaningful comparison.
3. Check the calculations with one complete example
Consider this fictional campaign, entered only to demonstrate the arithmetic:
- Budget: $1,000.
- Actual spend: $600.
- Impressions: 30,000, using a single reporting definition.
- Engagements: 900.
- Conversions: 20, using a defined attribution window.
The campaign card calculates CPM as actual spend divided by impressions, multiplied by 1,000. Here, $600 ÷ 30,000 × 1,000 gives $20 CPM. Cost per conversion is $600 ÷ 20, or $30. The $1,000 budget does not enter either calculation.
The 900 engagements are retained and included in the workspace’s engagement total. They are not the denominator for either displayed cost metric. If your question is cost per engagement, calculate that separately from the relevant spend and engagement figures, and label it clearly.
Use the result for the question it answers. A $30 cost per recorded conversion does not tell you the value of those conversions, the campaign’s profit, or how many would have happened without the campaign. The current form has no revenue field and does not calculate ROAS or ROI.
4. Read zeros, missing values and rounded amounts carefully
Blank numeric campaign fields are saved as zero. That means an unfinished record and a measured zero can look the same after saving. Keep a separate note identifying which results are still pending.
When impressions are zero, the card omits CPM. When conversions are zero, it omits cost per conversion. An omitted cost metric is not evidence of a free result. If positive impressions or conversions are entered while actual spend is blank, the saved zero spend can produce a displayed $0 cost metric instead.
Displayed dollar amounts are rounded to whole dollars, including spend, budget and the two cost metrics. A $100 spend with 300 conversions calculates to roughly $0.33 per conversion, but the card displays $0. Keep the original numbers for any decision that depends on cents, and calculate the precise ratio in a spreadsheet or calculator.
Before sharing a screenshot, check whether rounding hides a meaningful difference. Two cards displaying the same whole-dollar cost may have different underlying ratios.
5. Keep saved snapshots from inflating the totals
Each press of “Save campaign” creates another campaign record. The current campaign cards offer Remove, but no edit control. Saving a second record with the same name does not update or replace the first one.
This matters when recording weekly progress. If one snapshot contains 10,000 cumulative impressions and the next contains 15,000, keeping both records contributes 25,000 impressions to the workspace total. The latest cumulative result is 15,000 impressions; adding the snapshots double-counts the first 10,000.
Choose a consistent approach: maintain one current record per campaign, or use genuinely non-overlapping reporting periods. If you need to replace a record, export your workspace first, keep the old figures in your reporting history, add and check the corrected entry, then remove the superseded card. Until removal, both entries contribute to the total.
Workspace totals include every saved campaign, regardless of its stage. Changing creator search, platform or status filters does not filter campaign totals. The view bars compare the entered impression or view counts; they do not rank campaign profitability.
6. Calculate combined ratios from combined inputs
Do not average the displayed campaign CPMs to obtain an overall CPM. For example, combine the $600 / 30,000-impression campaign above with another fictional campaign costing $400 for 10,000 comparable impressions. Their individual CPMs are $20 and $40.
The combined spend is $1,000 and the combined impressions are 40,000. Overall CPM is therefore $1,000 ÷ 40,000 × 1,000 = $25, rather than the simple average of $30. If the second campaign also has 10 conversions, combined cost per conversion is $1,000 ÷ 30, or about $33.33, rather than the simple average of $35.
The workspace shows summed inputs, not these combined cost ratios. Calculate the ratios separately after deciding which records belong in the comparison. Combine conversions only when their definitions and reporting windows are compatible.
A short checklist before you hand over results
- Each campaign has an identifiable reporting period and a consistent definition of results.
- Actual spend includes the agreed costs and uses a consistent currency basis.
- Pending values are distinguished from measured zeros in the supporting notes.
- Superseded cumulative snapshots are not inflating the totals.
- Precise ratios are calculated from source values when whole-dollar rounding matters.
- The report states what the figures measure without claiming profit or causation.
“Export data” downloads the full creator and campaign workspace as JSON, including unfiltered records. Review it before sharing, especially if creator notes contain contact information. The available importer accepts creator CSV files, not that JSON workspace export, so treat the export as a reviewable record rather than a one-click restore file.
A useful campaign comparison lets someone retrace the figures and understand their limits. Start with one campaign, verify its inputs against your source records, and expand the comparison only when the definitions line up.