Creator affinity
Creator affinity is a creator's organic mention history with a brand or its competitive set, separated from any paid relationship. A creator who tagged a brand 14 times across IG and TikTok in 2026 without ever being paid scores higher affinity than one who posted twice as part of a contracted partnership. The metric matters because creators with prior organic affinity convert from outreach at roughly 2 to 3 times the rate of cold creators sourced by lookalike modelling.
What it is
Creator affinity is a relationship score between one creator and one brand, built from the creator's organic posts that mention or feature the brand without payment. The signal is volume (how many times), recency (how recent), engagement quality (did the audience respond), and consistency (one-off post or pattern).
Affinity is distinct from partnership history. A creator can have high partnership history with a brand · meaning the brand has paid them many times · and zero affinity, because every post was contracted. Conversely, a creator can have zero partnership history and high affinity, which is the unicorn case marketing teams want to find before competitors do.
Why it matters
Cold creator outreach is expensive and converts poorly. Marketing teams that filter creator shortlists by prior organic affinity convert at roughly 2 to 3 times the rate of teams that work from agency lookalike lists. The reason is simple: a creator who already posted about your category, organically, is pre-qualified.
Affinity also matters for competitive defence. If a creator with strong affinity for a competitor suddenly posts about you, that signal is more valuable than the same post from a creator with no category history.
How Sentia uses it
Sentia tracks creator affinity in the creator_brand_mentions table, which records every cross-platform creator-to-brand event with a flag for organic versus paid provenance. The table feeds the creator-shortlist engine and the per-creator card on the monitor view.
Affinity scores are calibrated cohort-relative. A creator who posted three times about your brand looks high in absolute terms; in a category where the median affinity creator posts five times, that same creator is mid-tier.
Related concepts
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