Why This Post Matters

Most brands still waste 50%+ of their influencer budget on the wrong creators. The problem isn’t that creators don’t work, it’s that most selection processes are broken.

• Teams pick creators based on vanity metrics (followers, likes).
• Outreach is manual, slow, and error-prone.
• No one knows if a creator will actually drive sales until after the money is spent.

The truth: if you’re still picking creators by scrolling through Instagram or TikTok feeds, you’re gambling. In 2025, top DTC operators use AI-powered discovery to forecast performance before they spend.

That’s how they consistently hit higher RoAS, lower CAC, and scale creator programs with confidence.

The Problem With Manual Discovery

For most brands, influencer discovery is still painfully outdated. Campaigns start with endless scrolling through Instagram or TikTok, evaluating creators on surface-level stats like followers and engagement, then negotiating over messy email threads. The result? Slow, inconsistent campaigns built on gut feel instead of data.

Here’s what the “old way” typically looks like:

The result? Over 50% of influencer spend is wasted (Social Snowball, 2024).

And that waste compounds over time. Without predictive ROI, most influencer programs plateau after the first few campaigns. Teams burn out, budgets get slashed, and campaigns collapse under their own complexity, because no one really knows which creators will actually convert.

The truth: manual discovery doesn’t scale. What worked for a single product seeding campaign won’t work when you’re managing dozens of creators across markets and expecting them to deliver revenue-level results.

The AI Advantage: From Guesswork to Predictability

The reason most influencer campaigns underperform isn’t because creators don’t work, it’s because brands pick them the wrong way. Too often, selection is based on vanity metrics like follower counts, engagement rates, or “brand fit” judged by aesthetics. Those numbers might look impressive, but they rarely correlate with sales.

AI changes that. With The Cirqle’s AI-powered discovery engine, creator selection becomes a predictive science instead of a guessing game.

Here’s how it works:

• ‍Search smarter → Instantly filter 1.2M+ verified creators by category, audience, geography, and engagement quality to find the right fit in seconds.‍
• Predict ROI upfront → Every creator profile includes a RoAS forecast, showing expected returns before a dollar is spent.‍
• Align audiences with precision → AI verifies that a creator’s followers match your ICP (ideal customer profile), eliminating wasted impressions on irrelevant audiences.‍
• Optimize costs → Built-in rate predictions ensure you’re paying fair value for expected performance, not overpaying for reach that doesn’t convert.
  

The shift is profound. Instead of gambling on vanity metrics, you’re making investments backed by data-driven probability of sales. It’s the difference between throwing darts in the dark and running a paid media campaign with predictive benchmarks.

The takeaway: AI turns discovery into the foundation of scalable ROI. It eliminates wasted spend, sharpens targeting, and allows brands to scale creator campaigns with the same precision as Meta Ads or Google Ads.

Benchmarks: What ROI Looks Like With vs. Without AI

Numbers tell the story. When brands shift from manual creator discovery to AI-powered discovery, the performance gap is dramatic. Based on aggregated data from Cirqle campaigns in 2024–2025, here’s how the two approaches compare:

What this means in practice:

• Campaigns that once took weeks of manual searching and contracting can now be launched in a single workday.
• CAC is cut by 30–40%, bringing influencer acquisition in line, or even below, Meta and Google benchmarks.
• RoAS nearly doubles, turning influencer marketing into a predictable profit center.
• With more accurate creator selection, brands retain top performers long-term, compounding results cycle after cycle.
• Budget waste drops dramatically, as brands stop paying for creators who don’t convert.

The takeaway: AI isn’t just faster, it’s more profitable. By removing the guesswork from discovery, brands unlock efficiency, cut costs, and scale campaigns with confidence.

Case in Point: Lyma Life

Challenge

As a luxury wellness brand, Lyma Life operates in a high-stakes category. With premium price points and a tightly defined customer base, customer acquisition costs (CAC) were already high, leaving little margin for error. Influencer campaigns were risky, one misaligned partnership could blow the budget without delivering measurable sales.

Solution

Lyma adopted The Cirqle’s predictive RoAS forecasts to bring discipline to creator selection. Instead of betting on aesthetics or follower counts, they shortlisted creators whose audiences directly overlapped with Lyma’s premium buyer segment. Every contract was backed by projected RoAS, giving the team confidence to invest only where returns looked strong.

Results

• ‍CAC decreased by 28%, easing pressure on margins‍
• RoAS improved from 1.9x to 3.4x, making influencer campaigns one of their most efficient acquisition channels‍
• High-value customers acquired with stronger repeat purchase rates, proving creators could drive not just sales, but retention in a premium segment

The result: Lyma scaled with precision, de-risking creator investments, protecting margins, and acquiring loyal, high-value customers. See case study.

Case Study: Lookfantastic

Challenge

As one of Europe’s leading beauty retailers, Lookfantastic runs influencer campaigns across multiple markets and hundreds of creators. But with scale came complexity. Manual creator selection was slow, inconsistent, and prone to error. Performance varied wildly from one campaign to the next, and significant budget was wasted on creators who didn’t convert.

Solution

By adopting The Cirqle’s AI-powered discovery engine, Lookfantastic shifted from guesswork to precision. Instead of relying on follower counts or aesthetics, they identified creators with proven conversion history and verified audience alignment in both the UK and EU. AI-driven RoAS forecasts gave the team confidence to invest upfront, while automation streamlined contracting and activation.

Results

• ‍75% faster campaign setup time thanks to automated discovery and workflows‍
• CAC dropped below Meta benchmarks in two key regions, proving influencer spend could be as efficient, or more efficient, than paid social‍
• Creator retention improved to 60%+, with top-performing influencers kept on quarterly retainers to compound results

By moving from manual processes to AI-powered discovery, Lookfantastic turned influencer marketing from a fragmented channel into a predictable, ROI-driven growth engine.

👉 Read Lookfantastic’s success story.

How AI Discovery Powers the Creator Flywheel

AI-powered discovery isn’t just a faster way to find creators, it’s the foundation of the Creator Flywheel, the compounding system top DTC brands use to scale influencer marketing with predictability.

Here’s how the flywheel works in practice:

1. Discover → Use AI to instantly shortlist high-probability creators with predicted RoAS, CAC, and audience alignment. Instead of guessing, you know who’s likely to drive revenue before you spend.‍
2. Activate → Contract, brief, and launch campaigns seamlessly with automated workflows. No more endless emails, broken spreadsheets, or disjointed tools.‍
3. Amplify → Feed the best-performing creator content into Spark Ads and Partnership Ads. Creator trust meets paid targeting power, unlocking performance at scale.‍
4. Measure → Track real-time RoAS, CAC, and LTV at both the creator and campaign level. Clear attribution proves ROI and keeps budgets flowing.‍
5. Repeat → Double down on proven performers by keeping them on retainer, while refreshing the mix with new AI-discovered talent each cycle.

The truth: a flywheel compounds. Each cycle makes the next one stronger.

• Creators improve at telling your story.
• Paid ads optimize faster with more creative inputs.
• Forecasts get sharper as more performance data flows into the system
• RoAS climbs, CAC drops, and scale becomes predictable.

This is how brands like Lyma Life and Lookfantastic run their influencer programs today: not as disconnected campaigns, but as systematized growth engines. The Cirqle’s AI-powered discovery is what makes the flywheel spin, and keep spinning.

The takeaway: AI discovery isn’t just about efficiency. It’s the entry point to building a self-reinforcing growth machine that compounds over time.

The Takeaway

Influencer marketing ROI doesn’t come from working with the biggest names or the loudest voices, it comes from working with the right creators. For years, brands poured budget into follower counts and engagement rates, only to realize those metrics don’t pay the bills. What matters is sales impact.

That’s where AI-powered discovery changes the game. Instead of gambling on reach, you start with precision. By forecasting RoAS, CAC, and audience alignment before a campaign ever launches, you eliminate wasted spend and dramatically increase the likelihood of success. The result? Influencer marketing stops being a PR experiment and becomes a scalable, performance-driven channel alongside Meta Ads, Google Ads, and affiliates.

With The Cirqle, brands can:

• ‍Reduce wasted spend by removing underperformers before contracts are signed‍
• Predict performance upfront with creator-level RoAS scores and CAC forecasts‍
• Scale confidently by feeding winning creators and content directly into Spark Ads and Partnership Ads‍
• Build systems, not stunts, turning one-off campaigns into compounding creator programs that drive predictable growth

The truth is simple: the next generation of breakout DTC brands won’t be built on gut feel and spreadsheets. They’ll be built on predictive data, automated workflows, and creators treated as performance media.

👉 Ready to see how AI-powered discovery can boost your influencer ROI? Book a demo today.

FAQs

Q: How does AI-powered discovery improve ROI?

AI transforms creator selection from a gamble into a data-driven process. By forecasting RoAS, CAC, and audience alignment before launch, it ensures budgets are only allocated to creators with the highest likelihood of driving profitable revenue.

Q: What data powers The Cirqle’s forecasts?

The Cirqle leverages first-party sales and campaign performance data from over 1.2M verified creators across Meta, TikTok, YouTube, and Shopify. This depth of data enables more accurate predictions than platforms relying on third-party or surface-level engagement metrics.

Q: Does AI replace human judgment?

No. AI enhances it. Strategy, brand fit, and storytelling still require human oversight, but AI removes the guesswork in performance forecasting. Teams can focus on creative and strategy, confident that ROI projections are built on hard data.

Q: How much faster is AI discovery compared to manual?

Manual discovery can take 40–60 hours per campaign, often with uncertain results. With AI, the same process is completed in under 8 hours, with far more accurate ROI predictions and cleaner shortlists.

Q: Which industries benefit most from AI-powered discovery?

The biggest gains are seen in DTC verticals like beauty, fashion, health, and consumer tech, where customer acquisition costs are closely scrutinized. That said, any performance-driven business, whether premium or mass-market, benefits from predictive selection.