5-step screen to flag a bought audience in 10 minutes

5-step screen to flag a bought audience in 10 minutes

Run before any contract:
— Follower-to-engagement ratio: under 1% ER on a sub-100k account is a flag
— Comment quality: emoji-only and one-word strings cluster on bought pods
— Follower growth curve: vertical spikes with no content trigger
— Geo mismatch: audience country not matching content language
— Like velocity: 80% of likes in the first hour, then flat

Two flags is caution, three is a pass.

So what: a clean ER curve is cheaper to verify than a refund clause is to enforce.

Benchmark: roughly 12-18% of cold-outreach accounts fail two or more checks (n=520 screened).