Every term you'll meet in an influencer campaign, defined in plain English. Bookmark it, send it to your finance team, thank us later.
Marketing where brands partner with social media creators to promote products to the creator's audience, trading on the trust the creator has built.
A company that represents creators commercially: sourcing and negotiating brand deals, reviewing contracts, collecting payment, and planning career strategy, usually for a commission of 10-20%.
The industry built around people earning income from online content, through brand deals, ads, subscriptions, merchandise, and platform payouts.
The percentage of a creator's audience that interacts with their content (likes, comments, shares, saves), usually a better predictor of campaign performance than follower count.
A creator with roughly 1,000-10,000 followers. Small reach, but often the highest engagement and trust of any tier.
A creator with roughly 10,000-100,000 followers, typically the best cost-to-conversion tier, with engagement rates of 3-8%.
A creator with roughly 500,000+ followers, used for fast, large-scale awareness rather than niche conversion.
Sending products to selected creators with no contract or brief, hoping they post organically because they genuinely like the product. Also called influencer gifting; 10-30% of well-targeted seeds typically convert to posts.
Authentic-style content made by creators for a brand's own channels and ads, rather than posted to the creator's audience. Priced on production, not reach.
TikTok's native ad format that boosts a real post from a creator's own account (with permission), keeping its likes, comments, and handle, typically outperforming standard in-feed ads.
A creator granting a brand permission to run paid ads through the creator's account identity on Meta platforms, the Instagram/Facebook equivalent of Spark Ads.
The agreed terms for how, where, and for how long a brand may use creator content, organic use, paid amplification, territories, and duration. Extended usage is priced separately from the post itself.
A contractual period during which a creator agrees not to work with a brand's competitors. Scope and duration are negotiated and chargeable.
A creator's price list for different deliverables (posts, videos, stories) and usage terms.
A creator's one-to-two-page sales document: bio, audience stats and demographics, engagement rate, past brand work, and sometimes rates.
An estimate of what organic exposure from a campaign would have cost as paid advertising, useful for awareness campaigns, best used alongside harder metrics.
Cost per mille, the cost of one thousand impressions. The standard unit for comparing awareness campaign pricing.
Cost per engagement, campaign spend divided by total engagements. The standard unit for comparing engagement campaign efficiency.
The clear disclosure required on paid or brand-controlled content. In the UK, ASA and CMA rules require it to be obvious before people engage, buried hashtags don't count.
The practice of ensuring campaigns can't damage a brand, through content standards, creator vetting, honest claims, and compliant labelling.
The branded backdrop wall at events, printed with repeating logos, that guests are photographed in front of.
Publicly announcing something (a partnership, a signing, a relationship) in full, as opposed to hinting at it (a soft launch).