A Selena Gomez Instagram Post Is Worth $3.5 Million

Like Rihanna before her, Selena Gomez has waded into the waters of designing sneakers for Puma. And, apparently, the venture is paying off dividends for the athletic-wear brand: To start, her shoe, the Phenom Lux (a portion of whose proceeds benefit the Lupus Research Alliance), swiftly sold out when it debuted in March.

But there’s also the less direct effect of their partnership. Just more than a month ago, the actor and musician (and, lately, television producer) posted a sponsored spot for the brand, in which she poses in head-to-toe Puma. (“Paid partnership with puma,” the location tag reads.) It quickly garnered more than 7 million likes—which, as Footwear News reported in its new cover story on Gomez and her recent design ventures, was the furthest reach of a sponsored Puma spot on her feed thus far.

Though ad spots are, presumably, not why Gomez’s 141 million followers (in case you missed the headlines, that’s the most of any person anywhere on Instagram) keep up with her every move, that places it somewhere in the upper range of likes her posts usually get. So maybe that helps explain why each post, according to Alison Bringé, Launchmetrics’ chief marketing officer, is worth $3.4 million in “media impact value,” a metric for advertising reach across various platforms, for the brand—well outpacing Puma’s native reach of $195,000. Of course, that doesn’t directly translate to sales, but it does speak to the efficacy of advertising that looks native, even if it’s really branded.

A couple of weeks after that post, in which Gomez poses in a sports bra, running tights, and sneakers, she put up another Puma photo of herself—this time perched on a golf cart—once again clad in a Puma look. This one, well, it’s up to nearly 8 million likes. Good news for Puma!

Related: Selena Gomez Reportedly Broke an Instagram Record Previously Held by Beyoncé