The 12-point framework for vetting Indian creators

Before a contract goes to a creator, we run twelve checks. Each one takes between thirty seconds and five minutes. Together they take about twenty minutes per creator and reject roughly one in three of the shortlisted candidates.

This playbook walks through the twelve checks in the order that catches problems fastest. If a creator fails check two, you don't need to run check seven. Order matters.

Why twelve checks

Brands ask us what we do that an in-house team can't. This framework is the answer. The twelve checks exist because we've seen each of these twelve things break a campaign. Every check earned its place by costing a client a disclosure notice, a reconciliation gap, or a brand-safety incident.

Paid third-party tools (HypeAuditor, Modash, Upfluence) cover about four of the twelve. They're a useful signal. They are not a substitute — and on Indian creators their coverage is thinner than on US creators because audience-verification APIs aren't as mature in the Indian market.

Check 1 — Audience geography

Ask the creator to screen-share the audience-country breakdown from their native analytics — Instagram Insights for Instagram, YouTube Studio for YouTube, LinkedIn Page Analytics for LinkedIn. If the creator won't share this, assume the answer is bad.

For an Indian D2C brand, we expect 80 percent or more of the audience to be in India. For a regional campaign, we expect to see the target state in the top five. A creator with 60 percent US audience is not a mismatch to fix — it's a mismatch to walk away from.

Check 2 — Engagement quality

Thirty minutes, no tools. Open the creator's last ten posts. Read the top twenty comments on each.

Real audiences ask questions. Real audiences disagree with the creator. Real audiences tag friends with context. Purchased audiences post emoji strings and six-word generic praise. After two hundred comments you can tell. We've never had this check disagree with a third-party audience-authenticity tool when both raised a flag.

Check 3 — Follower growth curve

Use SocialBlade or similar to plot follower count for the last twelve months. What you're looking for is shape.

Organic growth is noisy. It wobbles up and down within an overall trend. Viral moments create short sharp spikes that decay over weeks. Purchased followers or follow-for-follow schemes show up as step functions — 50,000 or 100,000 added in a week with no viral trigger. If the curve has a step function and you can't find a viral post to match it, the follower count is padded.

Check 4 — ASCI disclosure history

Scroll back through the creator's last twenty sponsored posts — anything that looks like a product mention or branded integration. Count how many carry a compliant disclosure: #ad, #sponsored, #paidpartnership, or Instagram's native "Paid partnership with" tag.

A compliant creator will carry disclosure on most or all of these. A non-compliant creator will have zero or inconsistent disclosure. Brands — not creators — carry the CCPA liability under the Consumer Protection Act. Non-compliant creators are disqualified on this check alone.

Our separate playbook on ASCI compliance walks through the regulation in detail.

Check 5 — Rate benchmarking against the live market

We maintain our own quarterly rate benchmarks at /benchmarks for the Indian market. Before every brief, the creator's quote is compared against the benchmarks for that creator's tier, platform, category, and deliverable type.

Anything 40 percent above the category median needs a specific reason — exclusivity terms, higher-production format, strong historical conversion. Anything 40 percent below the median is usually a signal that something is broken: the creator's audience is declining, they're burning inventory before a category exit, or the rate is a first-offer we should counter.

We don't quote off a published rate card. Rates move quarter to quarter, and rate cards published once a year drift further from the market the longer they sit.

Check 6 — Exclusivity and category conflicts

Ask the creator two specific questions:

1. Which brands have you posted for in the last six months?
2. Which categories are you under exclusivity with right now?

Category overlap is the single most common reason a creator campaign erodes trust. If the creator posted for a competing brand four weeks ago, their audience has not reset. The campaign will read as promiscuous to the audience even if the contract is clean.

Exclusivity windows that the creator is currently inside are often invisible to shortlist tools. The only way to surface them is to ask.

Check 7 — Content quality by watching

Pick a reel, a long-form post, and a Story series. Watch each one end to end without skipping. No tools. No metrics.

What you're looking for: production quality (lighting, audio, framing), pacing, hook discipline, and whether the creator's on-camera personality is sustainable at scale. A creator who can't hold attention for forty-five seconds will not hold attention for a ninety-second branded piece.

This check matters more when the campaign pays for content on top of reach — UGC licensing, Spark Ads, whitelisting. If all the brand needs is the creator's audience, production is less critical. If the brand is going to run the content as an ad, production is non-negotiable.

Check 8 — Identity and banking verification

The creator's handle and their legal banking entity are often different. A third of first-time brand partnerships fail invoicing because of this gap.

Ask for:

• Legal name on PAN card
• Bank account name (must match PAN or be a registered proprietorship / company)
• GSTIN if the creator is registered (over ₹20 lakh annual turnover — most creators in the macro and mega tiers are)
• A signed creator consent or release template for image and content usage

Do this before the contract ships. Trying to fix it after posts go live is expensive.

Check 9 — Platform algorithm health

On Instagram, check whether the creator's reach has decayed relative to their follower count. A creator with 500,000 followers whose last twenty reels averaged 30,000 views is underperforming. Ask why.

On YouTube, check watch-time retention on long-form content — YouTube Studio exposes the 30-second and one-minute retention graphs to the creator. Strong creators retain 50 percent or more at the one-minute mark.

Algorithm health is a leading indicator. A creator whose reach has been declining for three months is a creator who will over-deliver on your campaign only by luck.

Check 10 — Past brand partnership outcomes

Ask for two or three reference brands the creator has worked with. Reach out to those brands directly — the creator's account manager, CMO, or the agency on record.

Specific questions: Did the creator deliver to brief? Did the content disclosure meet requirements? Did the creator respond to revision requests within the agreed turnaround? Would the reference brand book them again?

We skip this check for creators we've personally worked with in the last twelve months — their internal track record replaces external references.

Check 11 — Content format fit

Not every creator is good at every format. An Instagram reel creator is often weak at long-form YouTube. A LinkedIn thought-leadership creator is often weak at short-form Reels.

Match the creator's strongest format to the campaign's primary deliverable. Running a campaign that forces a creator into their weakest format is overpaying for underperformance.

Check 12 — Deliverable clarity

Before the contract goes out, the brief must be explicit on:

• Number of posts (split by format — reel, story, carousel, long-form)
• Usage rights (creator's channel only, paid amplification allowed, UGC licensing for brand channels)
• Revision cycles (we default to two)
• Disclosure language per post
• Payment terms (we default to 50 percent on contract signing, 50 percent on final approval)
• Exclusivity window post-campaign (usually 30 days in the same category)

Ambiguity on any of these six points is the most common reason campaigns go over schedule and over budget. We don't let a contract go out without all six specified.

How to run this in practice

The twelve checks take about twenty minutes per creator once you have the workflow down. For a campaign with a shortlist of fifteen creators, you'll eliminate five to seven of them and contract with the remaining eight.

We run these checks even for creators we have past history with. Audience composition changes. Disclosure history matters on the last twenty posts, not on last year's. The framework is a habit, not a gate.

If you'd like us to run this on a specific shortlist, the brief form at /contact is the starting point. The vetting fee is folded into the campaign management fee — there is no separate charge for the check.