If you are still vetting influencers based on their follower count in 2025, you aren't just wasting your budget—you’re actively risking your brand’s reputation.
For the last decade, the "Social Graph" dictated our strategies. We assumed that if we paid someone with a million followers, something close to a million people would see our product. It was a simple, comforting metric that looked great on a spreadsheet, even if it was never true.
That era is officially over.
We have moved firmly into the era of the "Entertainment Graph." In this new reality, content performance is almost entirely decoupled from follower counts. The algorithms of TikTok, Instagram Reels, and even LinkedIn no longer care who posted the content; they only care how good the content is.
In fact, we analyzed 65 influencers we’d hired and the hundreds of posts they’d created for us, looking for a correlation between follower count and the total views for each post. Put simply: there was no correlation whatsoever between follower count and impressions.
As we look toward 2026, the challenge isn't finding an influencer; it's finding the right influencer in a sea of noise. While Artificial Intelligence (AI) has given us unprecedented tools to discover niche creators, it has also introduced new risks that automated tools simply cannot catch.
Here is the reality of influencer vetting today: AI is your detective, but a human must be your judge.
- The "Lazy Metric" Trap: Why Follower Count is Dead
- The Inverse Relationship of Scale and Engagement
- The "Organish" Solution
- Speedy Search: Leverage AI for "Natural Language" Discovery
- Untapped Gold: The "Hidden" Advocate Strategy
- Don’t Be AI Blinded: The Human Firewall (Why AI Vetting Isn't Enough)
- Specific Risk to Watch in 2025: Political Volatility.
- Failsafe: The Contract is Your Safety Net
- Paid For: Spotting "Fake Influence"
- Conclusion: Tech for Speed, Humans for Safety
The "Lazy Metric" Trap: Why Follower Count is Dead
Countless brands continue to ask me, "How many followers do they have?" That needs to stop. The better question (with less obvious answers) is, "Are they actually an advocate?" Alternatively, you can also ask, “How does their sponsored content perform relative to their unsponsored content.”
The data is clear: follower count does not align with reach or engagement in the modern algorithm. Yet, many brands still use it as their primary filter because it’s easy. It’s a "lazy metric"—a number that comforts stakeholders but doesn't drive business results.
The Inverse Relationship of Scale and Engagement
Recent data from 2025 paints a stark picture of the "follower fallacy." As follower counts rise, engagement rates consistently plummet.
- Nano-Influencers (1K–10K followers): These creators are currently seeing engagement rates between 4% and 8% on Instagram. They are effectively "peers" to their audience, and their recommendations hold the weight of a friendship.
- Micro-Influencers (10K–100K followers): This tier averages 2% to 4% engagement. They have professionalized their content but haven't lost touch with their community.
- Macro/Mega Influencers (500K+ followers): Once you cross the half-million mark, engagement rates often drop to 1% or lower.
If you are paying a premium for a macro-influencer with 1 million followers, but their engagement rate is 0.8%, you are effectively paying for 992,000 "ghosts" who will never engage with your content.
Furthermore, the decline of organic reach is accelerating. By 2025, organic reach on platforms like Facebook has dipped to around 2%-6%, and Instagram is hovering around 7.6%. The "free ride" of posting to a massive following is over.
The "Organish" Solution
This decline in organic reach is why we have championed the concept of "Organish" for both brand-owned and influencer content.
In a world where organic reach is dying and paid ads are becoming more expensive, "Organish" sits in the middle. It involves identifying high-performing organic content from brands or influencers and using paid media to syndicate it to a broader audience.
Instead of paying a celebrity $50,000 to post to their 1 million followers (most of whom won't see it), you identify a group of micro-influencers whose content is getting around a 6% engagement rate. You pay them a smaller fee for the content, and then you put the remaining budget behind their specific posts as a partnership ad.
You aren't betting on their followers; you are betting on their creative capability. You are using their content to fuel your paid engine. This is why vetting for content quality is now infinitely more important than vetting for audience size.
Speedy Search: Leverage AI for "Natural Language" Discovery
The old way of finding influencers involved searching databases for generic keywords like "beauty," "tech," or "mom."
The result? You got the same list of 50 influencers that your competitors got. You ended up in a bidding war for "generic" creators who had lost their niche appeal.
The new standard in 2025 is Natural Language Search.
Advanced platforms like CreatorIQ and others have integrated AI that allows us to move beyond keywords and into conversational queries. Instead of searching for "dog owner," you can now search for:
This is a fundamental shift. It allows you to move beyond broad demographics and find creators who fit specific "vibe" checks and content styles.
Moving Beyond Keywords to Context
AI doesn't just look for hashtags; it analyzes the context of the content.
- It can analyze the audio in videos to hear if the creator mentions specific brand affinities.
- It can scan thousands of images to identify visual styles that match your brand’s aesthetic (e.g., "dark and moody photography" vs. "bright and airy").
- It can detect sentiment patterns, ensuring that when a creator talks about your industry, they are doing so positively.
This allows for a level of specificity that was impossible just two years ago. We can now find the "needles in the haystack"—the creators who have about 15,000-30,000 followers but are absolute authorities on your specific niche.
Untapped Gold: The "Hidden" Advocate Strategy
One of the most underutilized strategies in 2025 is looking inward before looking outward.
Your best influencers might not be in a database; they might be in your CRM. By connecting your customer databases to social data, you can identify creators who are existing customers.
The Power of the Purchase
Think about the difference in content quality and authenticity between these two scenarios:
- Influencer A: Paid $5,000 to pretend they like your product for 60 seconds. They mispronounce the product name in the first draft and clearly read off a teleprompter.
- Influencer B: Has bought your product monthly for the last two years. They have a smaller audience (maybe 20k followers), but they have posted about you for free in the past because they genuinely love the brand. Now, what content quality would you expect for that same payment?
Influencer B will outperform Influencer A on ROI almost every time. Why? Because the advocacy is real.
Data supports this shift. 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family over any form of advertising. When a creator is a genuine customer, their content carries the weight of a "friend recommendation" rather than a "paid ad."
Implementing CRM Matching
There are several tools that will run customer lists through secure data-matching tools (compliant with privacy laws) to append social handles to customer records.
You will often find that you have customers who happen to be influential. Reach out to them. The conversation is different. You aren't pitching a cold transaction; you are upgrading an existing relationship.
Tactical Tip: Look for the "New Mentions" feeds in tools like CreatorIQ. These AI-powered feeds automatically flag creators who are already talking about your brand, giving you a warm lead list every single morning.
Don’t Be AI Blinded: The Human Firewall (Why AI Vetting Isn't Enough)
While AI is incredible at discovery, it is dangerous when trusted blindly for safety.
We are seeing a trend where brands, trying to move fast, rely solely on automated "Brand Safety Scores." These scores are very useful first passes, but they are not infallible.
AI is great at binary detection. It can find:
- Nudity.
- Hate speech keywords.
- Profanity.
It is terrible at context, nuance, and history.
The "Milkshake Duck" Phenomenon
We have all seen it happen. A brand partners with a beloved viral star. The campaign launches. Two days later, the internet digs up a tweet from 2016 where that creator said something truly awful.
The AI didn't catch it because the keyword wasn't explicit, or the context was sarcastic, or it was buried in a video transcript that the tool couldn't parse.
In 2025, 77.8% of marketers report that brand safety concerns influence their willingness to invest in influencer marketing. Yet, remarkably, over 50% of marketers spend 30 minutes or less vetting a single influencer.
That is a recipe for disaster.
The "Human Review" Protocol
To prevent campaign virality from turning into "brand backlash," you must implement a "Human Firewall." At Carusele, we use a tiered vetting process:
- AI Scan: Run the initial check for red flags, fake followers, and engagement anomalies.
- The "Vibe Check": A human strategist watches at least 10–20 pieces of recent content. Does the creator’s humor align with the brand? Are they too political? Do they swear excessively in a way that AI missed?
- The "Deep Dive": For high-stakes partnerships, we manually audit historical content. We look for Undisclosed Handles (finstas), Leaked Personal Info, and Past Controversies that might be "sleeping."
Specific Risk to Watch in 2025: Political Volatility.
With the cultural climate becoming increasingly polarized, AI often struggles to identify "dog whistles" or subtle political signaling that might alienate half your customer base. A human eye is required to spot these nuances.
Failsafe: The Contract is Your Safety Net
Once you have identified the right creator and vetted them, the protection mechanism shifts to the contract.
Handshake deals and DM agreements are a liability. In 2026, your contracts need to be far more sophisticated than the standard "post X times for Y dollars."
Critical Clauses for 2026
- Whitelisting and "Dark Posting" Rights
As mentioned above, the real value often lies in paid distribution. Your contract must grant you the right to whitelist their handle (allow you to run ads from their profile) for a specific period (usually 30–90 days). Without this, you are capped by organic reach, and your final CPM calculations will be quite high.
- The "Morality Clause"
Standard morality clauses are vague. Your contract should be specific about what constitutes a breach. If a creator becomes involved in a scandal, you need an immediate "kill switch" to pause the partnership and withhold remaining payments. Do you prohibit engagement pods? How about purchased likes? All of this is important.
- Exclusivity & Competitive Separation
Influencers are monetizing heavily. It is not uncommon to see a creator post about a skincare brand on Monday and a competitor on Wednesday. AI tools can help monitor this after the fact, but your contract needs to prevent it before it happens. Of course, you need to be reasonable with this. Restrict only competitors you care about, and be reasonable about the length of the exclusivity arrangement based on what you’re paying and how long you’re paying.
Paid For: Spotting "Fake Influence"
Despite platform crackdowns, "fake influence" is still a massive industry.
AI has made it easier for bad actors to generate fake comments and engagement that look real.
Signs of Fake Influence in 2025:
- Engagement Spikes: A flat engagement line followed by a massive, unexplained vertical spike usually indicates purchased likes.
- Generic AI Comments: Comments that read "Great post! 🔥" or "This is so helpful" without referencing the specific content of the video. Or a dozen comments in a row that are all emojis.
- The "Follower/Following" Ratio: Nano-influencers often follow many people back, but a "Macro" influencer who follows 50,000 people is likely using "follow-for-follow" bots.
Use tools like HypeAuditor or CreatorIQ to audit the Audience Quality Score. If an influencer has 100k followers but 40% of them are based in countries irrelevant to your target market (e.g., a US brand seeing massive follower counts from click farms in Brazil or Russia), run away.
Conclusion: Tech for Speed, Humans for Safety
The future of influencer marketing isn't about automating everything. It's about using AI to do the heavy lifting of sorting through millions of creators to find the few who truly align with your brand values.
But once that shortlist is built, the human element is non-negotiable.
We are entering an era where Trust is the most valuable currency.
- Trust from the algorithm (gained through high engagement).
- Trust from the audience (gained through authenticity).
- Trust from the brand (gained through safety).
Don't let the allure of efficiency compromise that trust. Use AI to find the needle in the haystack, but use your team—and your common sense—to make sure that needle isn't going to prick you.
