In performance buying, brand safety is handled by the platform: categories, exclusion lists, automated moderation. In working with creators there is no such infrastructure at all — there's a person who decides whom to work with.
What we check manually
The creator's last ten posts. Not headlines — the content itself. An algorithm sees a word in the topic and assigns the channel to a category; a human sees how the creator actually talks about it.
The difference is fundamental. A channel that analyzes the risks of gambling and a channel that promotes it look the same to a classifier. To the audience and to the regulator — the opposite.
What gets filtered out
Proximity to prohibited topics — the obvious one. Less obvious: a creator who last week publicly feuded with half the niche. Advertising with them will get attention, just not the kind you paid for.
Also: channels where comments are completely unmoderated. Your post will sit right next to whatever the readers write, and the screenshot will include both.
At this step another roughly ten percent drops out — from those who already passed everything else.
A whitelist instead of approving each placement
Approving one by one means losing three to four days per placement. Platforms sell the slot to someone else in the meantime: a popular channel's schedule is booked a month ahead, and "we'll think about it until Friday" means "we're skipping this month."
That's why the list is approved upfront, in full: sixty to eighty channels, vetted and approved before launch. From there, the pace is set by available slots in creators' schedules, not by back-and-forth.
The list is alive: a channel that shifts in tone gets removed, and that doesn't require a new round of approvals.
What to put in the contract
Creator replacement if the placement falls through or the content diverges from what was agreed. The right to pull a post within 24 hours. Category exclusivity for the duration of the flight — not always achievable, but always worth discussing.
These clauses feel like a formality until the first time you need them. After the first time, they feel like the bare minimum.
A geo closes mid-flight: what to do with the budget
A regulator does not change the rules at the start of a quarter but on an arbitrary Tuesday. The plan for that day is written before the launch, not on the day of the news.
ReadPostbacks and reconciliation: what to set up before the first click
Data cannot be reconstructed after the fact. Anything that was not recorded at the moment of the action is gone for good — which is why tracking is set up before the launch, not after the first week.
ReadTest Campaign or straight to scaling: what decides it
The temptation to skip the test and spend the full budget costs more than the test itself. But testing forever is not working either.
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