10 red flags to look for before sponsoring a creator

Most sponsorships that go wrong are visible in the data before money changes hands. Here are the ten patterns we see most often, ranked from "discount the offer" to "walk away".

1. Median impressions less than 5% of follower count

Means the algorithm doesn't surface their content to their own audience. Either the audience is bot-padded, the content has decayed, or the platform deprioritized the account. Discount CPM at minimum, walk away if it's a dealbreaker for your campaign.

2. Follower count grew 50%+ in the last 30 days

Without an explanatory event (viral post, major news mention), rapid growth is usually paid. Look at engagement growth in the same window — if it didn't double, the new followers aren't watching.

3. Generic, emoji-only comments dominate the feed

Classic engagement pod signature. The creator's audience is producing manufactured engagement to game distribution. Your sponsored post will see the same fake engagement and zero conversions.

4. Comment-to-like ratio under 1%

Likes are cheap to fake; comments require typing. If 50,000 likes generate 100 comments, something is off. Healthy creators average 2–5% comment-to-like.

5. Recent sponsored posts have half the engagement of organic

Tells you exactly what your conversion baseline will look like. The audience signals they're tuned out of sponsored content from this creator.

6. Niche drift across the last 20 posts

A creator who posts tech reviews, then politics, then fitness, then crypto has an audience that's there for personality, not topic. Sponsorship conversion against personality audiences is unpredictable.

7. Following-count nearly matches follower count

Classic follow-for-follow growth. Audience is mostly other creators trying to do the same thing — terrible for B2C conversion, sometimes fine for B2B if the creator's network maps to your ICP.

8. No bio link or recently-changed bio link

Bio link is the highest-conversion surface a creator owns. If they haven't set one or change it frequently, they're not optimizing for outbound conversion — which means your CTAs will underperform.

9. Posting velocity over 15/day with engagement scaling sub-linearly

High velocity with collapsing per-post engagement is either burnout content or automated posting. Either way the audience is tuning out.

10. The creator pitches you on a rate before you ask

Soft signal, but real. Pros let you anchor. Volume-sellers anchor high. The creators with the strongest sponsorship outcomes tend to ask about the brand and the campaign before they quote.

Which ones are dealbreakers?

Numbers 1, 2, and 5. Everything else can be priced around or worked into the brief. Those three indicate the audience is either fake, decayed, or actively ignoring sponsored content — and no amount of creative direction fixes that.