Influencer marketing glossary

The terms you will meet when hiring creators, in plain English. For prices, see the creator pricing guides.

UGC (user-generated content): Photos and videos made by a creator in an authentic, customer-style format. Brands usually post UGC on their own channels or run it as ads, rather than on the creator's account.
Influencer marketing: Paying or partnering with creators to promote a product to the audience that follows them, usually through sponsored posts, videos or stories.
Deliverables: The specific content a creator agrees to produce, such as one reel, three stories and one feed post, including formats, lengths and posting dates.
Brief: The brand's written instructions for a campaign: the product, key messages, must-haves, things to avoid, deliverables and deadlines.
Usage rights: Permission for the brand to reuse a creator's content, for example on its website or in paid ads, for a stated period. Usage rights are usually priced separately from the post itself.
Partnership ads (whitelisting): Ads that run through a creator's account handle with the brand paying for distribution, such as Meta partnership ads or TikTok Spark Ads.
Exclusivity: An agreement that the creator will not work with the brand's competitors for a set period. Exclusivity usually increases the fee.
Engagement rate: Likes, comments, shares and saves divided by followers or by reach, shown as a percentage. It indicates how actively an audience responds to a creator's content.
Reach and impressions: Reach is the number of unique people who saw a piece of content; impressions count every time it was shown, including repeat views by the same person.
CPM (cost per mille): The cost of 1,000 impressions: the fee divided by impressions, multiplied by 1,000. It lets brands compare creator fees with paid media.
CPE (cost per engagement): The fee divided by the number of engagements a post received.
Nano, micro, macro and mega influencers: Common audience-size tiers. A frequently used convention is nano under 10,000 followers, micro 10,000 to 100,000, macro 100,000 to 1 million, and mega above 1 million; thresholds vary by agency and market.
Media kit: A creator's one-page summary of audience size and demographics, engagement, past brand work and rates.
Escrow: Holding a payment with a third party until agreed conditions are met. On AFFWORLD, the brand's payment is held and released to the creator after the agreed content is approved.
Performance-based (affiliate) deals: Paying creators per result, such as a sale, lead or app install, often through a tracked link or discount code, instead of, or on top of, a flat fee.