Sorting a creator list by followers answers a question nobody asked: who is biggest. The question on the media plan is who reaches the people you are trying to reach, at a price that survives contact with the budget.
Start from the audience definition
Describe the audience first — geography, age band, interests, the platforms they actually use — and let the shortlist fall out of it. Matching works from that definition rather than from profile size, which means a 40k-follower creator whose audience is 80% your target can outrank a 400k account that overlaps by a tenth.
Reach behaves the way you would expect it to: widening a criterion never shrinks the pool. If loosening a filter drops your estimated reach, the ranking is broken, not clever.
Check the blockers before you fall in love
- Category restrictions are real. Creators can decline whole categories, and a brand has more than one. Every category a brand carries is checked before a booking, not just the headline one — which is why a shortlist can quietly exclude someone your deck already featured.
- Sub-categories inherit. A niche can sit under a parent, and choosing the child brings the parent with it. A brand tagged only for esports still trips a creator’s block on gaming.
- Shared slots have competitors. Where a placement is shared, the competitor check runs on the preview as well as the booking, so the shortlist does not offer you something the confirmation would refuse.
Then price it
Only once the audience fits and nothing blocks the booking is the rate worth looking at. Reversing that order is how shortlists end up full of affordable creators who reach the wrong people — the cheapest possible way to spend a budget badly.
Buy the audience. The follower count is just how it was packaged.