Creator pricing is a problem, and everyone is trying to determine the best solution. But one of the biggest hurdles that creators, their agents and the creator marketers looking to work with them face isn’t the initial price tag to get the partnership started, but the usage rights that are tacked on.
Usage rights have become a major part of every creator partnership, dictating how the content will be used, where it will appear (locally or globally), and how long it can be used. As such, they’re also a major point of contention throughout the creator pricing process.
“There’s no consistency in terms of how pricing is presented,” said Danielle Wiley, founder and CEO of influencer marketing agency Sway. “When we go out to a creator or to a manager and ask for pricing, we are very clear: ‘This is for the post. This includes 30 days paid usage, two months organic usage, and 30 days exclusivity. And we want a price for that’.”
Wiley said pricing structure widely ranges — brands often give pricing separately, or offer usage pricing by the day, and influencers sometimes charge for a post and don’t include any paid usage at all. “There’s no understanding of how to structure this stuff,” she said.
Roz Sedaghat, director of legal affairs at creator marketing Pearpop, regularly drafts creator agreements. She tells Digiday there’s often a varying understanding of what brands and creators have agreed to in terms of usage.
“Oftentimes the scope of usage rights wasn’t clearly defined at the offer stage,” she said. “I attribute this to the use of shorthand in negotiations…usage rights are presented as organic or paid, and then left at that, and critical details are left out.”
Iluka Enright, senior influencer manager at Movers+Shakers, said it feels like pricing is reverting back to the old school media kits, just with usage instead of platforms as the core focus.
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