You can benchmark, though the honest caveat is that broad averages hide big differences by niche, platform and creator size. A beauty micro-creator and a tech mega-account sit in different worlds. The more useful benchmark is your own past campaigns and creators matched on size and niche, not a single headline figure.
Whether you can meaningfully compare your campaign results to an industry standard.
The trap in benchmarking is comparing across things that are not alike. Published industry averages blend niches, platforms and creator sizes that behave very differently, which lets a single figure mislead more than it guides. The stronger practice is two-fold: compare a campaign to your own past results, then compare creators to peers matched on size and niche. That gives a fair yardstick. The upstream factor that skews any benchmark is audience quality, since inflated followers flatter reach and deflate engagement rates. Flinque shows audience data and a fake-follower score per creator, which lets you compare like with like. For quick per-account reads, the tools at /free-tools/ estimate engagement without a login.