Most creator campaign reports are a screenshot of a dashboard and a paragraph of adjectives. The number is big, the colour is green, and by the end you still cannot say what was posted, what it cost or whether you would do it again.
A report is the only thing a campaign leaves behind. It is also the thing you will reach for when the next launch is being planned and someone asks “what worked last time?”. So it is worth knowing what a good one contains, so that you can ask for it from anyone, including us.
Here is the checklist. Five sections, in this order, and if any one of them is missing, ask why.
What ran, and what it did
What ran is a complete list of every post the campaign produced. Each line has the creator, the platform, the format, the day it went live and a link you can click. Not a summary. Not “a selection of highlights”. All of it, including the post that landed badly, because that one tells you more than the best one does.
If the report does not have this list, you cannot check anything else in it. Start here. If a creator was booked and did not post, that should be on the list too, with a line on why and what replaced it.
What it did is the platform’s own figures for every post on that list, pulled on a date agreed before the campaign began. That last part matters. A figure pulled on the best day looks different from one pulled a fortnight later, and the agency gets to choose the day unless you fixed it in advance.
Look for whether the figures are presented per post, so you can compare, or rolled into one total, so you cannot. A total is not wrong, but it is not a report. Look too for the figures nobody likes to show: the watch time on the long video, the click-through on the link, the comments that asked a real question. A report that shows only the flattering numbers is a brochure.
We do not put figures on this website, and we will not put projections in a proposal. The report is the place for numbers, and they are yours.
What it cost
Creator spend and the agency fee, line by line, against the budget that was agreed at the start.
Each creator’s rate, as paid to them. The fee, shown separately, so you can see the two numbers are the two numbers you agreed. Anything passed through, such as production or paid media, on its own line with what it was for. Then the total, beside the agreed budget, with any difference explained.
This section is short when the model is clean and long when it is not. If you find yourself reading a paragraph that explains why the creator costs are “approximately” something, or why the fee is “included in” something else, you have learned what you needed to about how the agency makes its money.
What we learned, and what next
What we learned is where the report earns its keep. Which creators worked for your product and which did not, with a reason you can act on. Which formats held attention and which lost it. Which angle in the brief landed and which one the creators quietly dropped. What the comments said, in a sentence or two of plain summary, not a word cloud.
The test for this section is whether it says anything that would have been uncomfortable to write. A good one does. It names the creator who underdelivered and says what we would do differently with the brief. If every lesson is “do more of the same”, the agency has written a sales document and called it a report.
What next is a recommendation, in plain words, with no obligation to take it. It might be a larger campaign. It might be a smaller one, with the three creators that worked and none of the others. It might be nothing for a while, because the product needs a feature before another round makes sense. A recommendation that is always “bigger” is not a recommendation; it is an invoice with a preamble.
Three things that should not be in it
Claims the figures do not support. If the report says the campaign “drove sign-ups”, there should be a line showing how that was measured. If it cannot be measured, the report should say so rather than imply it.
Numbers you cannot trace. Every figure should lead back to a platform, a post and a date. “Combined reach” and “estimated impressions” are estimates, and the report should call them that rather than present them beside the figures that are real.
A surprise. Nothing in the final report should be the first you have heard of it. If you had a short written update each week the campaign was live, the report confirms what you already knew and adds the lessons. If the report is where you discover that a creator dropped out, the problem is not the report.
Read the next report you receive against this list. If it has the five sections, with the full post list, the figures from an agreed date, the costs line by line and a lesson that stung a little, keep that agency. If it has a screenshot and a paragraph, you have a dashboard, not a report, and you paid for a report.