Glossary

41 terms, each defined in plain language with a worked example. Definitions are self-contained, so a cited answer stands without the rest of the page.

• Ad disclosure

  The legally required, up-front labelling of paid or incentivised content — clear before engagement, in every major market.

• Affiliate marketing

  Commission-per-sale creator partnerships via tracked links or codes — aligned incentives, and honest only with realistic conversion maths.

• Ambassador programme

  A long-term, multi-deliverable creator partnership trading continuity and exclusivity for better rates and deeper association.

• Audience demographics

  The composition of a creator's audience — age, gender split, geography — visible only through consented analytics.

• Boosted post

  An organic post amplified with ad spend after publication — extending proven content rather than creating ad variants.

• Brand deal

  A paid partnership between brand and creator — fee for content and audience access, under contract with disclosure.

• Brand lift

  Measured change in awareness or intent caused by a campaign — the survey-based answer to 'did anyone remember this?'

• Brief

  The brand's working document for a collaboration: message, deliverables, timeline, mandatories, usage, disclosure and fee.

• Conversion rate

  The share of an audience completing the target action — the metric that turns attention numbers into commercial ones.

• CPA

  CPA is cost per acquisition — the campaign metric closest to commercial truth, and the hardest to attribute fairly.

• CPC

  CPC is cost per click — what each visit from a placement actually cost, bridging attention metrics and conversion metrics.

• CPM

  CPM is cost per thousand impressions — the standard unit for comparing the price of attention across placements and platforms.

• CTR

  Click-through rate — clicks divided by impressions — measures how compelling content is at converting attention into action.

• Dark posting

  Ads run from a creator's handle that never appear on her public grid — targeted paid distribution wearing her identity.

• Deliverables

  The countable outputs of a collaboration — formats, quantities, platforms and review rounds, stated precisely.

• Engagement rate

  Engagement rate defined, with the by-followers and by-reach formulas and why the two versions answer different questions.

• Exclusivity

  A paid promise not to work with named competitors for a period — priced by category breadth and duration, or refused.

• Fake followers

  Purchased or bot accounts inflating follower counts — estimable from converging signals, never provable from outside.

• Follower growth rate

  The pace and shape of audience growth — where the shape of the curve tells more than the percentage.

• Gifting

  Free product sent to creators in hope of coverage — an invitation, not a commission, and still disclosable when strings attach.

• Impressions

  Impressions are total displays including repeats, which is why they always read larger than reach and can mislead in reports.

• Macro influencer

  500,000+ followers: awareness-scale reach with celebrity-adjacent pricing and the lowest engagement rates by structure.

• Media kit

  A creator's one-page commercial summary: audience, formats, prices and proof — with dated, honest numbers.

• Micro influencer

  Roughly 10,000–100,000 followers: the workhorse tier balancing niche trust with workable reach and professional reliability.

• Mid-tier influencer

  Roughly 100,000–500,000 followers — professionalised creators bridging niche credibility and mass reach.

• Nano influencer

  Creators under roughly 10,000 followers — the tier with the tightest audience trust and the highest per-post variance.

• Paid vs organic

  The two distribution modes — earned audience reach versus purchased reach — and why reports must separate them.

• Rate card

  A creator's published price list by format — usually 'from' prices, with usage and exclusivity priced separately per deal.

• Reach

  Reach means unique people who saw content — distinct from impressions — and is the honest denominator for performance claims.

• Retention rate

  The share of a video an average viewer watches — and where they leave — defining where an integration is actually seen.

• Save rate

  Saves per reach — the deferred-intent signal that predicts action better than likes.

• Seeding

  Wide, low-obligation product distribution to many creators to generate organic coverage and identify future paid partners.

• Share of voice

  Your brand's slice of category conversation — the competitive framing for awareness campaigns.

• Share rate

  Shares per reach — endorsement in metric form, and the engine of organic spread.

• Sponsored post

  A single paid content placement on a creator's own channel, clearly labelled and priced by her rate levers.

• Takeover

  A creator temporarily running a brand's channel — borrowing her voice for the brand's audience, with clear guardrails.

• UGC

  User-generated content: audience-made material brands reuse — and, loosely, commissioned native-style content made to look organic.

• UGC creator

  A creator paid for production and style rather than audience — content is delivered to the brand, not posted to her followers.

• Usage rights

  The licence defining where and how long a brand may reuse creator content — the single biggest lever on price after audience size.

• Watch time

  Total minutes viewed — the currency video algorithms optimise for, and the depth metric behind view counts.

• Whitelisting

  Whitelisting lets a brand run paid ads from a creator's own handle — a distinct licence that prices above organic posting.