A field guide for the era when brands and creators work directly. Campaign ops, negotiation, guidelines, dispute handling โ and how imktr works under the hood.
Five peer-reviewed studies, distilled into decisions you can make this quarter: when a bigger influencer hurts you, why hiding the sponsorship does not pay, and the three metrics where moderate beats maximum.
There is no list price, so it feels like whatever they ask. But four variables explain most of the number. Here is a defensible baseline that avoids both overpaying and lowballing.
"It seems to be working but I can't prove it" is the number one reason influencer budgets get cut. The tracking has to exist before the first package leaves.
An account with 100K followers and 200 likes per post is mostly a number. Five minutes of checking catches the obvious frauds before your budget does.
Over-specify and the content reads like an ad. Under-specify and it drifts. The job of a brief is to draw a clear line between what is mandatory and what is theirs.
A collaboration video that performed well is a proven ad creative. Most of the return on influencer marketing comes from the second use, not the first.