(Re)Inventing influence: valuation and justification in the influencer marketing industry

This article examines how influencer marketing companies and their algorithmic tools define and measure ‘influence' in Latin America. Drawing on Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot's ‘orders of worth' framework, and based on case studies and interviews with executives from three Chilean companies, the study analyses how these firms deploy digital quantification practices to identify, monitor, and manage influencers. The findings show that agencies seek to calculate influencers' value through opaque indicators, pricing structures, and monitoring systems that remain largely invisible to content creators. Despite the volatility, lack of regulation, and risks that characterise the industry, these companies promise brands greater certainty by offering algorithmic tools that select, control, and evaluate influencers. Far from acting as neutral intermediaries concerned only with brand safety, agencies actively shape influencer practices by setting expectations, defining performance metrics, and enforcing pricing standards-often to the detriment of creators. By tracing how agencies justify and operationalise metrics to assign value to influencer labour, the article highlights how processes of quantification reproduce asymmetrical relations of power. It argues that these dynamics undermine influencers’ agency whilst consolidating the dominance of platforms and intermediaries in the wider influencer economy.