Omnicom bets on purchase data to solve influencer marketing’s measurement problem

Advertising giant Omnicom Media has unveiled a new system for brands to plan influencer campaigns based on what audiences buy, rather than how popular a creator is on social media.

The approach combines customer shopping data from Walmart Connect with creator and audience data from Meta’s ecosystem. Omnicom said this allows brands to identify influencers whose followers are more likely to purchase specific products, rather than relying on surface-level signals such as likes or follower counts.

Kevin Blazaitis, president of Creo USA, Omnicom Media’s influencer marketing division where the tool sits, said the initiative is designed to give brands a deeper view of audience behaviour. “We can now quantify the reach, we can understand the resonance of a creator’s content, and now we can look at what reactions we can expect from that audience,” he said.

The launch, announced at CES in Las Vegas, comes as platforms including Meta continue to expand tools that pull creator partnerships deeper into their ecosystems, positioning influencer content closer to traditional advertising models.

But not everyone is convinced that technology-led solutions fully capture how influencer marketing works in practice. In a recent interview with The Daily Influence, Alessandro Bogliari, founder and chief executive of The Influencer Marketing Factory, warned that platform and data tools risk oversimplifying a process that remains highly human.

“You’re not working with a data point,” Bogliari said. “You’re working with a person.”

The purchase-based planning tool is now live and is being used by select Omnicom clients.