Influencer marketing glossary
49 terms you meet when you hire creators, from reach and engagement rate to usage rights and POAS, each defined in a sentence or two. Every term has its own link, so you can send someone straight to it.
Reach and engagement
Reach
The number of different people who saw a piece of content. One person who sees a post three times counts once.
Impressions
The number of times a piece of content was shown, counting repeats. Impressions are always at least as high as reach.
Views
How many times a video started playing. Each platform sets its own rule for what counts as a view, so views on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube are not exactly comparable.
Real Reach
Acurrate’s measure of how many people a creator’s posts actually reach: the median views of their last 10 or so posts. It replaces follower count as the starting point for any forecast, because on large TikTok and YouTube accounts a post can reach a tenth of the followers or less. What is Real Reach?
Follower count
How many accounts follow a creator. It is a running total that includes inactive and long-gone followers, so it overstates how many people see a typical post.
Engagement
The actions people take on a post: likes, comments, shares and saves. Which of these a tool counts varies, so check before comparing numbers.
Engagement rate
The average likes and comments per post, divided by followers and multiplied by 100. A creator with 20,000 followers averaging 600 likes and comments has a 3% engagement rate. Engagement rate calculator
Engagement rate by views
Likes and comments divided by views rather than followers. It measures how many of the people who actually watched acted, and is the fairer read on TikTok and YouTube. TikTok engagement rate calculator
Audience demographics
The age, gender and location of the people who follow or watch a creator. It decides whether a creator’s audience can buy from you at all, for example whether they live in the countries you ship to.
Fake followers
Followers that are bots, bought accounts or abandoned profiles. They raise a follower count without raising reach, which is one reason a rate per follower can look low on an account that seems large.
Engagement pod
A group of creators who agree to like and comment on each other’s posts. It raises engagement without raising interest from real buyers.
Creators and tiers
Influencer (creator)
Someone who publishes content to an audience that follows them, and can be paid by brands to feature a product. Most brands now say creator; the words mean the same thing.
Nano influencer
A creator with under 10,000 followers. Nano creators reach the largest share of their followers per post, often a third or more. The Real Reach Report
Micro influencer
A creator with 10,000 to 100,000 followers. Per follower, micro creators reach more people than the largest accounts on every platform we measure. Micro-influencers: a guide for brands
Mid-tier influencer
A creator with 100,000 to 500,000 followers.
Macro influencer
A creator with 500,000 to 1 million followers.
Mega influencer
A creator with over 1 million followers. On TikTok and YouTube a mega creator’s typical post reaches about 3% of their followers. The tier lines above are the ones the Real Reach Report uses; other sources draw them differently.
UGC creator
A creator paid to make content for the brand’s own channels and ads, rather than to post it to their own audience. You pay for the video, not the reach.
Brand ambassador
A creator in a longer partnership, usually several posts over months, often with a commission or a retainer on top of a fee.
Deals and contracts
Sponsored post
A post a creator is paid, in money or product, to publish about a brand. Instagram and TikTok both have a paid-partnership label for them.
Disclosure (#ad)
Telling the audience that a post is paid or gifted. In the US the FTC expects any material connection between a creator and a brand to be disclosed clearly, for example with #ad or the platform’s paid-partnership label.
Flat fee
A fixed price for agreed content, paid whatever the post sells. The brand carries the risk, so the fee should be no higher than the profit the post is likely to bring in. How much to pay an influencer
Gifting (product seeding)
Sending free product to creators with no obligation to post. It costs the product and the shipping, and works when enough creators like the product to post it anyway. Influencer seeding guide
Affiliate commission
A percentage of each sale a creator drives, tracked through their link or code. It moves the risk to the creator, so creators with large audiences often want a fee as well.
Discount code (creator code)
A code unique to one creator that gives their audience money off. It tracks the sales a creator drives, and the discount is a real cost that comes off each order’s profit.
Deliverables
The exact content a creator agrees to produce: how many posts, Stories or videos, on which platform, and by when.
Creative brief
The document that tells a creator what the brand wants: the product, the key points, what to avoid, deadlines and whether the brand approves the content before it goes live.
Usage rights
Permission for the brand to reuse a creator’s content on its own channels or in ads, for a set period. Usage is usually priced on top of the post fee.
Whitelisting (partnership ads)
Running paid ads through a creator’s account, so the ad shows their name and handle. Meta calls these partnership ads and TikTok calls them Spark Ads. It needs the creator’s permission and is usually priced separately.
Exclusivity
A clause stopping a creator from working with competing brands for a set time. It costs the creator income, so it adds to the fee.
Rate card
A creator’s published price list for each kind of content. It is a starting point for negotiation, not a measure of what the post is worth to your store. Influencer rate calculator
Influencer contract
The written agreement for a collaboration: deliverables, deadlines, fee and payment terms, usage rights, exclusivity, disclosure and what happens if a post is late or missing.
Money and measurement
AOV (average order value)
Revenue divided by the number of orders. With conversion rate, it turns the people a creator sends into revenue.
Conversion rate
The share of visitors who place an order. Your store’s own rate is what matters, because the same creator sends the same people to every brand.
COGS (cost of goods sold)
What the products you sell cost you to make or buy. Revenue minus COGS, shipping and discounts is the profit an order leaves.
Gross margin
The share of revenue left after the cost of the goods. A product that sells for $50 and costs $20 has a 60% gross margin.
ROAS (return on ad spend)
Revenue divided by the spend on one campaign or channel. A ROAS of 3 means $3 of revenue for every $1 spent. It ignores what the orders cost to fulfil.
MER (marketing efficiency ratio)
Total revenue divided by total marketing spend, across every channel. Its break-even level is 1 divided by gross margin. What is MER?
POAS (profit on ad spend)
The profit a deal leaves after product, shipping and discount costs, before the fee, divided by the fee. 1.0× is break-even: the deal earns back exactly what it cost. MER, ROAS and POAS
ROI (return on investment)
What a collaboration earned compared with what it cost. For a creator deal, count profit, not revenue, and count every cost: fee, product, shipping and discount. How to calculate influencer ROI
CPM (cost per thousand)
What you pay for every 1,000 views or impressions. A $500 fee for a post that gets 25,000 views is a $20 CPM. It compares creators with each other and with ads.
CPA (cost per acquisition)
What you paid for each order or new customer a campaign brought in: the total cost divided by the orders. When it means new customers only, it is often called CAC.
EMV (earned media value)
A dollar figure given to a post’s views or engagement, based on what the same exposure would cost in ads. It is not revenue, and different tools calculate it differently.
Attribution
Working out which sales a creator caused, usually through their discount code or a tracked link. Codes miss buyers who saw the post and bought later without the code, so attributed sales are a floor.
UTM parameters
Tags added to a link, such as ?utm_source=instagram, so your analytics can show which creator a visitor came from.
Terms you will see in Acurrate
AcuScore
One number that ranks a creator by how well they fit your store and how good a creator they are. It answers “should this creator be on my shortlist?” What they could earn you is the forecast, shown beside it. How AcuScore works
Forecast
What a creator is likely to earn your store: their Real Reach, through clicks and your own conversion rate and order value, to orders and the profit those orders leave. Each step is shown. Influencer ROI forecasting
Safe to pay
The most you can pay a creator before the deal loses money, on your store’s own numbers.
Target price
The most you can pay a creator and still hit your profit goal. Use it as your ceiling when you negotiate.
Put the numbers to work
The free influencer ROI calculator runs a creator’s Real Reach through your own conversion rate and order value and shows what they could earn your store. More guides and tools are on the resources page.
See what a creator is worth to your store
Paste any Instagram or YouTube handle into the free ROI calculator: the revenue a post would bring, and the most you can pay without losing money. No account needed.