Mako Creator Overview
Mako Creator is an AI-powered influencer marketing platform built for food and lifestyle brands. Instead of spending weeks searching spreadsheets or briefing agencies, you get a curated shortlist of verified creators in minutes — matched by audience overlap, engagement quality, and brand fit.
From a pool of 10M+ creators, Mako surfaces those who actually move the needle for your brand.
Our AI engine is trained on millions of real brand–creator collaborations across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. It continuously adapts to real-time audience signals and trend data, so the creators you see today are the right ones for where your market is heading — not where it was six months ago.
What you can do on Mako Creator
- •Discover creators — search by niche, platform, follower tier, engagement rate, audience location, and brand affinity score.
- •Run campaigns — publish a campaign brief, let creators apply, and manage the full pipeline from one dashboard.
- •Pay securely — funds are held in escrow and released only after content is approved, with a flat 10% platform fee and no subscription.
- •Track performance — monitor reach, impressions, engagement, and ROI for every creator in real time.
- •Scale confidently — fake follower detection and audience quality scoring ensure every creator you work with is the real deal.
Creating a Campaign
A well-structured campaign brief is the foundation of a successful creator collaboration. The more clearly you define your goals, the better Mako's AI can surface creators whose audience genuinely matches your ideal customer.
1. Set your campaign objective
Start by choosing what you want to achieve. Mako Creator supports three core objectives:
- •Brand awareness — maximize reach and impressions across a target demographic.
- •Product launch — drive excitement and traffic for a new menu item, product line, or location opening.
- •Performance / conversions — track promo code redemptions, app installs, or online orders directly attributed to each creator.
Your chosen objective shapes how Mako ranks and recommends creators — so pick the one that actually reflects how you'll measure success.
2. Write a compelling brief
Your brief is what creators read before deciding whether to apply. A strong brief gets more applications from higher-quality creators.
Brand introduction: We're a fast-casual Korean BBQ chain with 12 locations across the West Coast. Our audience is food-curious 25–35 year olds who care about quality ingredients and bold flavors.
What we're looking for: A creator who makes authentic food content — no scripted testimonials. We want real reactions, behind-the-scenes prep footage, or a "first visit" vlog format.
Deliverables: 1× TikTok video (60–90s), 3× Stories. Usage rights for 30 days.
3. Set your budget and timeline
Enter the total budget you want to allocate for this campaign. Mako will hold these funds in your brand wallet — they're only released to creators after content is approved. You can set an application deadline and a target go-live date so creators know your expected timeline upfront.
Creator Matching
Once your campaign is live, Mako's recommendation engine gets to work. It doesn't just filter by follower count — it scores every creator against your specific campaign parameters and surfaces the ones most likely to drive results.
How the AI match score works
Each creator you see in your recommendations receives a match score from 0–100. This score is calculated from four weighted signals:
- •Audience overlap (40%) — what percentage of the creator's followers match your target demographic by age, location, and interest category.
- •Content relevance (30%) — how closely the creator's past content aligns with your brand category, using semantic analysis of captions, hashtags, and video transcripts.
- •Engagement quality (20%) — real engagement rate adjusted for follower size, comment sentiment, and saves/shares ratio (not just likes).
- •Brand affinity (10%) — whether the creator has historically worked with brands in adjacent categories and how those collaborations performed.
Audience quality checks
Every creator on Mako Creator goes through an automated audience audit before being surfaced to brands. This includes:
- •Fake follower detection using growth pattern analysis and engagement anomaly scoring
- •Bot comment filtering to ensure engagement metrics reflect real human interaction
- •Audience location and age verification against platform-provided demographic data
- •Historical partnership review to surface any brand safety concerns
Outreach & Pricing
Forget email threads and spreadsheet negotiations. Once Mako recommends a creator, you can invite them to your campaign directly through the platform. Creator pricing is estimated by Mako's AI before you even reach out, so there are no surprises.
How creator pricing is estimated
Mako calculates a recommended price for each creator based on:
- •Estimated CPM — derived from the creator's average views per post multiplied by their audience quality score.
- •Content format — short-form video, long-form review, Stories, and static posts each carry different market rates.
- •Exclusivity window — whether you need the creator to avoid competitor brands during the campaign.
- •Usage rights — extending rights beyond the standard 30 days increases the fee accordingly.
A food creator with 180K TikTok followers, 6.2% engagement rate, and a 30-day exclusivity window requesting a 60-second product video:
Estimated range: $800 – $1,200 per post
Mako surfaces this estimate before you invite them, so you can set expectations before any conversation begins.
Negotiation — done by AI
When a creator applies or responds to your invitation, Mako's AI negotiation agent handles the back-and-forth on your behalf. It aims to get you the best price within your budget while being fair to the creator. Some creators proactively offer lower rates to signal their commitment to the partnership.
You're notified of the final agreed rate and can approve or decline before any funds are committed.
Confirming Creators
Once you're happy with a creator's application and the agreed rate, confirming them locks in the collaboration and moves funds from your brand wallet into escrow. This protects both sides: the creator knows they'll be paid, and you know funds won't be released until you approve the content.
What happens at confirmation
- •The agreed creator fee is moved from your wallet into a secure escrow account
- •The creator receives a confirmation notification with full campaign details and deadlines
- •A collaboration contract is auto-generated and signed digitally by both parties
- •Content submission and approval timelines are set and tracked in your campaign dashboard
Managing multiple creators
If you're running a multi-creator campaign, each creator is confirmed individually. You can stagger confirmations — for example, confirming your top three picks first and holding budget for a backup — without affecting other active collaborations.
Content & Delivery
After confirmation, creators move into the content production phase. Mako's platform keeps everything organized — draft submissions, revision requests, and final approvals all happen in one place, with a clear audit trail.
The content review workflow
- •Draft submission — creator uploads a draft (script, storyboard, or rough cut) for your review before final production begins.
- •Feedback round — you can leave timestamped comments on videos or annotate images directly in the platform. Up to two rounds of revisions are included.
- •Final approval — once you approve, the creator publishes the content. Mako logs the publish timestamp and URL for performance tracking.
- •Escrow release — funds are automatically released to the creator 10 days after content is published, giving you time to verify live performance.
Content standards
All content submitted through Mako Creator is reviewed against our content quality guidelines before you ever see it. Mako automatically flags:
- •AI-generated voiceovers or fully synthetic content
- •Misleading claims that don't align with your approved brief
- •Copyright issues in background music or third-party footage
- •Missing disclosure tags (e.g. #ad, #sponsored) required by FTC guidelines
Tracking Results
Measuring what actually worked is as important as finding the right creators. Mako's analytics dashboard gives you a real-time view of every campaign's performance — across all creators, platforms, and content types.
Metrics tracked automatically
- •Reach & impressions — total unique accounts reached and total content views across all placements.
- •Engagement rate — likes, comments, saves, and shares normalized by reach, not follower count.
- •Click-through rate — via Mako tracking links embedded in creator bios or Stories swipe-ups.
- •Promo code redemptions — if you issue creator-specific promo codes, redemption counts are tracked in real time.
- •Estimated earned media value (EMV) — the equivalent cost of the same reach purchased as paid ads.
Exporting reports
Campaign reports can be exported as a branded PDF or raw CSV at any time. Each report includes a per-creator breakdown, a campaign-level summary, and an AI-generated narrative that highlights top performers and key insights.
Top performer: @foodie_marco drove 3.2× the average CTR for this campaign, likely due to the "day in my life" format resonating with his 25–34 female audience in Los Angeles — your primary target market.
Recommendation: Consider a long-term ambassador relationship with @foodie_marco for Q3.
Platform & Features
Mako Creator is built on three core pillars: discovery intelligence, payment security, and performance clarity. Here's a deeper look at how each one works under the hood.
AI Matching Engine
Mako's recommendation system uses a combination of natural language processing (NLP), graph-based audience modeling, and historical campaign outcome data to match brands with creators. Unlike simple keyword filters, the engine understands context — it knows that a fitness creator who frequently covers meal prep is a better fit for a healthy sauce brand than a general food blogger with more followers.
The model is retrained weekly on new campaign outcome data, so match quality improves continuously as more brands and creators use the platform.
Escrow Payment System
Every payment on Mako Creator flows through a regulated escrow account. This isn't just a Stripe hold — it's a legally structured escrow that provides real protection for both brands and creators.
- •Funds are deposited to your brand wallet via credit card or bank transfer
- •Wallet balances earn no interest and are ring-fenced — they cannot be used for any purpose other than creator payments
- •Escrow is triggered at creator confirmation and released automatically after the 10-day post-publish window
- •Disputes trigger a 72-hour mediation window before any funds move
Analytics & Reporting
Mako pulls performance data directly from platform APIs (Instagram Graph API, TikTok for Business, YouTube Data API) to ensure accuracy. Data is refreshed every 6 hours for active campaigns and every 24 hours for completed ones.
Integrations with Shopify and WooCommerce allow Mako to correlate creator activity with actual purchase data, giving you a true ROAS figure — not just an engagement estimate.
FAQ
Common questions about how Mako Creator works.