The influencer rate card in India stopped meaning anything
Follower-based pricing survived long after follower counts stopped predicting anything, and the correction is being paid for one campaign at a time.
Influencer pricing in India is still quoted per follower with a category multiplier, which made sense when reach was roughly proportional to audience size. On a recommendation-driven feed it is not, and has not been for some time.
What the feed actually does
Distribution is decided by the post's early performance, not by the creator's follower count. A creator with 40,000 followers regularly out-delivers one with 800,000, and the same creator's two posts in a week can differ by an order of magnitude. Paying a fixed rate against a number that no longer drives delivery is paying for a proxy that broke.
The market knows this. It has not repriced, because the rate card is the only shared language between brand, agency and creator, and nobody wants to be first to give it up.
How we are buying instead
- Price a floor against median delivered views over that creator's last ten posts, not against followers.
- Put the upside in performance. Creators who are genuinely good at this accept it; the ones who decline are telling you something.
- Buy the right to amplify. A good post that the brand can put spend behind is worth several that it cannot.
- Judge on saves and shares. In this category they predict purchase far better than likes or reach do.
Follower count is now a price, a history and a vanity metric. It has stopped being a forecast.
