Creator marketing, defined plainly

UGC

User-generated content. Video or photos a creator makes for a brand to use on the brand’s own channels and in its advertising. It is not posted to the creator’s audience unless that is agreed and paid for separately. You are buying the content and the licence, not reach.

Influencer post

Content a creator publishes to their own audience, in exchange for a fee. You are buying access to that audience, so the price tracks reach and engagement rather than production effort. This is the opposite purchase to UGC and it has a different rate card.

Usage rights

Permission to use a creator’s content, defined by where it may run, on which channels, and for how long. The base fee usually covers only the creator posting it once on their own account. Anything else, including putting it on your website or running it as an ad, is a separate licence with its own price.

Whitelisting

Running paid advertising from the creator’s own handle, so the ad appears to come from them rather than from the brand. It performs well because the social proof stays attached. It is priced separately from both the post and ordinary paid usage, and roughly half of creators charge extra for it.

Spark Ads

TikTok’s version of whitelisting. The brand boosts an existing organic post from the creator’s account, keeping the original engagement and comments rather than starting a fresh ad from zero.

Exclusivity

A commitment by the creator not to work with competitors for a defined period. Priced by how wide the category is and how long the window runs. Thirty days in a narrow category is a modest addition; several months across a broad category can cost more than the original fee.

Seeding

Sending product to creators with no obligation to post, to find out who genuinely likes it. Cheap, honest when done properly, and unreliable by design. The mistake is implying an obligation without paying for one.

Gifting

Giving product in exchange for content. In Canada and the United States free product is a material connection that must be disclosed, whether or not money changed hands, so a gifted post still needs a disclosure.

Nano creator

Roughly 1,000 to 10,000 followers. The closest relationship with an audience, the cheapest to test with, and the most hands-on to manage. Engagement rates are typically highest at this tier.

Micro creator

Roughly 10,000 to 100,000 followers. The practical sweet spot for a small budget: real reach at rates a startup can afford, and still reachable by email.

Mid-tier creator

Roughly 100,000 to 500,000 followers. Meaningful reach, needs a proper contract and timeline. Engagement rates are often at their lowest in this band, which surprises people.

Macro creator

Roughly 500,000 to a million followers. Reach and credibility in one purchase, and beyond most small-business budgets.

Engagement rate

Interactions divided by followers, expressed as a percentage. Useful as a first filter and misleading as a verdict. Compare it against the normal band for that follower count rather than a flat threshold, because the figure falls as accounts grow.

Reach

The number of unique accounts that saw a piece of content. More meaningful than follower count on platforms that distribute by interest rather than by who follows whom, which now includes TikTok and increasingly Instagram.

Impressions

Total views, including the same person seeing something more than once. Always higher than reach, and easy to mistake for it.

CPM

Cost per thousand impressions. Lets you compare a creator post against a paid ad on the same basis. Divide the fee by the impressions, then multiply by a thousand.

EMV

Earned media value. An estimate of what the exposure from a creator post would have cost to buy as advertising. There is no standard formula, every vendor calculates it differently, and it is easy to inflate. Treat it as a directional number, never as revenue.

Rate card

A creator’s published prices by format. A good one prices the work and the rights separately, so extra hooks, extra aspect ratios, rush turnaround and advertising usage are visible lines rather than assumptions.

Hook

The first two or three seconds of a video, and the part that decides whether anything else is seen. Testing several hooks against the same body is the cheapest performance improvement available in creator content.

Aspect ratio

The shape of the video. Nine by sixteen for vertical feeds, one by one for square, four by five for Instagram feed. Each one usually needs its own export and sometimes its own reframe, so ask for the ones you need before the shoot rather than after.

Kill fee

What the creator is paid if the brand cancels after work has started. Without one agreed in the contract, a cancelled campaign leaves the creator with nothing for work already done.

Pay-when-paid

A contract clause making the creator’s payment conditional on the brand or agency being paid first. It moves someone else’s cash-flow risk onto the person with the least power to absorb it, and it is a common reason creators wait months. Also called sequential liability.

Material connection

Any relationship between a brand and a creator that an audience would not assume: payment, free product, a discount, travel, an employment link. Its existence is what triggers the requirement to disclose.

Disclosure

Telling the audience the content is paid or gifted. It has to be clear, prominent and close to the claim, not buried in a block of hashtags or hidden behind a "more" link. In Canada this sits under Ad Standards guidance and the Competition Act; for United States audiences the FTC endorsement guides apply as well.

Brand safety

Whether a creator’s wider content is something a client would want their product next to. It is judged by a person reading recent posts, not by a score.

Engagement pod

A group of creators who agree to like and comment on each other’s posts to game distribution. It inflates engagement rate without inflating buying intent. The signature is the same small cluster of accounts commenting within minutes of every post.

Follower fraud

Bought followers or engagement. The usual signal is follower growth arriving as a vertical line that does not match any post that performed. Buying or selling fake engagement to misrepresent influence is now specifically prohibited by United States trade regulation.

Creator brief

The document telling a creator what to make. A good one names one message, the claims that may not be made, the deliverables and formats, the deadline, and the approval process. A bad one lists four benefits and a discount code.

Approval rounds

The number of times a brand may ask for changes. Agree the number in advance, usually two, and price further rounds. Unlimited revisions is how a profitable job becomes an unprofitable one.

Raw footage

The unedited files behind the final video. Cheap to agree at the start and expensive to negotiate afterwards. Ask at brief stage if you want the option to recut later.

Affiliate link

A trackable link paying the creator a share of sales it generates. Useful for attribution, weak as a creator’s only compensation, because it shifts all the risk onto them for work already delivered.

Attribution

Working out which activity caused a sale. Genuinely difficult for creator marketing, because most of its effect is people seeing something and buying later through another route. Promo codes and unique links capture part of it and miss the rest.

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