As creator spend scales, risk scales with it.
15/01/26
As creator spend scales, risk scales with it. Most brands feel that intuitively, but very few have a clear framework for it.
They are relying on gut feel, Slack chats and last month’s performance report. That works when you are spending £10K. It does not hold when you are deploying six or seven figures a year through creators.
Over the next few years, creator portfolio risk management will move from “nice to have” to “C-suite question.” If you cannot explain where your exposure sits, it starts to look like operational immaturity.
This is how to think about it in plain language.
The three real risks
Forget the jargon for a moment. Most creator risk falls into three buckets:
Concentration risk
Audience decay risk
Compliance and brand safety risk
You do not need a 40-page risk report. You need to know where you are exposed in each of these.
1. Concentration risk
This is the equivalent of putting 40% of your investment portfolio into a single stock.
If 30% of your creator-driven revenue comes from one creator and that person has a scandal, gets de-platformed or simply decides not to renew, you do not have a performance problem. You have a single point of failure.
A simple rule of thumb:
No single creator should drive more than 20% of your creator revenue
Your top three creators together should sit under 40%
Stress test:
If your number one creator disappeared tomorrow, what happens to next quarter’s revenue?
If the answer is “we lose more than 10%,” you are over-exposed.
The point is not to panic. The point is to know this in advance and start building bench strength before it becomes a problem.
2. Audience decay risk
Creators rarely “fall off a cliff” overnight. The warning signs show up quietly in the numbers.
Six months ago, your partner had 500K followers and a healthy engagement rate. Today they are at 480K and engagement is down 25%. That might be a temporary algorithm wobble. It might also be the start of a trend.
Reasons this happens:
The content has gone stale for that audience
The platform has changed how it ranks their content
The creator has drifted away from the niche you bought into
There is a newer creator in the same space pulling attention
You do not need to obsess over every fluctuation. What matters is the direction of travel.
Signal to watch:
Track engagement monthly. If a creator’s engagement rate is dropping more than 15% month on month for three months in a row, you are no longer in “one bad week” territory. You are in audience decay.
Stress test:
Look at your top ten creators over the last 90 days.
Who is flat or growing?
Who is declining?
If you had to replace a declining top performer, do you already know who the next two or three options are?
3. Compliance and brand safety risk
This is the nightmare scenario.
You have a great campaign live. Then an old tweet resurfaces, a controversial video goes viral, or the creator is accused of something serious. Your brand is in the comments because you are on their grid.
You cannot predict everything. You can reduce the odds.
Basic hygiene:
Search their name properly, not just on the main platform
Scroll back through older content, not just the last 12 posts
Pay attention to how they show up in comments and replies
Ask yourself honestly: “If their last 100 posts were pulled into a court document, would we be comfortable?”
Stress test:
Take your top five creators and do a 360° sense check.
If any of them ended up in a negative headline tomorrow, would that hurt your brand in a meaningful way?
If the answer is yes, you need an exit plan and a replacement plan.
Building a simple risk architecture
You do not need a complex model. A tiered view is enough.
Low-risk creators
Each one represents less than 10% of creator revenue
Engagement is stable or growing
Brand safety checks are clean
Contract has a clear exit clause
These are the creators you can afford to build with over the long term. They should hold roughly a third of your budget.
Medium-risk creators
Usually sit in the 10–15% revenue range
Engagement is stable or only slightly down
Maybe a couple of minor red flags in history, but nothing disqualifying
This is your working portfolio. You want good contracts, regular check-ins and clear performance expectations. They will often take 40–50% of the budget.
High-risk and test creators
New, unproven or very volatile performers
Limited history to vet
Early-stage tests where you are still figuring out fit
Treat this like your experimental sleeve. Small allocations, tight scopes, fast decisions. Ten to twenty percent of budget is enough to keep learning without over-exposing yourself.
Quarterly stress tests that actually matter
Once a quarter, sit down with your numbers and run a few simple “what if”s:
Top-creator exit: If your best performer walked away, what would it do to revenue?
Engagement drop: If engagement fell 25% across your top five creators, would your ROAS still make sense?
Platform shock: If TikTok disappeared tomorrow, what percentage of your creator-driven revenue would vanish with it?
Budget cut: If your creator budget was cut by 20%, who would you keep and who would you cut first?
These questions are not academic. The answers should influence how you invest, who you develop and where you diversify.
The compliance layer
On top of financial risk, there is a quieter operational layer:
Are all posts properly disclosed in line with local regulations?
Are your contracts clear on deliverables, usage rights and what happens if content is deleted?
Have you been clear about who owns what content and for how long?
A simple quarterly checklist is enough. You are aiming for “no surprises.”
Where this is heading
As creator programs move from “test budget” to “line item,” risk stops being an afterthought.
The brands that win will not just have the best creators. They will have the cleanest risk picture:
No single point of failure
A bench of emerging talent ready to step up
Clear contracts and compliance
Simple, repeatable stress tests that inform decisions
That is what a creator portfolio looks like when it is being managed like an asset class, not just a list of names in a spreadsheet.