How to Read a Creator's Media Kit (and What's Usually Missing)

A media kit is a sales document. That’s not an insult; your brand’s pitch deck is a sales document too. But I’ve reviewed a lot of them, and the gap between what a kit says and what the channel analytics say is often 30% or more. Here’s how to read one without getting burned.

The numbers that mean less than they look

“Total reach” is usually every platform’s follower count added together, including the dormant TikTok and the Twitter account from 2021. Ignore it. “Impressions” over a cherry-picked 30-day window that happened to include a viral video is also common. Ask for 90-day averages instead; one good month is weather, three months is climate.

Engagement rate is the slipperiest one because there’s no standard formula. Some creators calculate it against followers, some against reach, some against views. The same channel can honestly claim 2% or 11% depending on the denominator. If the kit doesn’t show the formula, ask.

What’s almost never in the kit

Two things. First, audience geography. A creator with 40% of viewers in a market you don’t sell to is a 40% discount you’re not getting. Second, sponsorship history: what brands they’ve worked with recently, how often they run ads, and whether past sponsors came back. A creator whose sponsors return for second and third campaigns is telling you something no engagement metric can.

What to actually ask for

Screen-recorded, first-party analytics. Not a screenshot, which takes four minutes to fake, but a screen recording of the creator scrolling through their YouTube Studio or Instagram insights. Any professional creator will do this without complaint. The ones who push back are answering your question a different way.

When we pitch a creator to a brand, the audited numbers come with the introduction, so the media kit becomes what it should be: an introduction, not evidence. That’s the whole point of vetting before the pitch.