Our reading
The brief that starts with a follower floor
Most influencer briefs we receive open with a minimum follower count. Nothing under 100K. It feels like a quality filter. It is closer to the opposite: it removes the part of the curve where engagement is strongest and keeps the part where it is falling.
That does not make big creators useless. It makes follower count a bad primary filter. Reach and engagement are two different purchases and the same number does not optimise both.
What we actually do with this
Build the list around the outcome, not the size. If the campaign needs comments, saves and shares — the things that signal a real audience relationship — the research points at the middle of your list, not the top. If it needs raw impressions in a fixed window, the top is genuinely correct. Say which one you are buying before anyone opens a media kit.
Spread the budget. One creator with a million followers and ten with a hundred thousand can reach comparable numbers. The study's shape says the ten will generally out-engage the one. It also means one underperforming post does not take the campaign with it.
Pay for customisation, and expect it. The paper found the drop-off flattens when content is genuinely tailored. This is the finding with the clearest commercial edge: a template caption dropped across fifteen creators is cheaper to produce and measurably worse. If a creator is willing to make something specific, that is worth paying more for, not less.
Unknown brands get a break. The curve is flatter when the audience does not already know the brand. New entrants suffer less from going large than established ones do — which inverts the usual assumption that big names are for big brands.
What it does not license
This is not "nano creators are always better." The curve rises before it falls, and the bottom of it is not the peak either. The finding is that there is a middle, not that smaller is always better.
It also is not an ROI claim. Engagement is not revenue, and the study does not follow anyone to a purchase. We have written separately about how easily influencer ROI numbers are inflated, and nothing here fixes that — a highly engaged post can still sell nothing.
The uncomfortable part
Agencies are paid, structurally, to recommend bigger names. Bigger names cost more, the fee is often a percentage, and a recognisable creator is easier to defend in a room than a good one nobody has heard of. That incentive is real and it points the wrong way relative to this evidence. Worth knowing about whoever is building your list, us included.
The study above is the work of its authors and is not ours. The summary and commentary on this page are written by Big Bang Story and are our interpretation, not the authors’. We do not host copies of other people’s papers — read it at the source.