Influencer marketing is advertising through people instead of ad slots: brands pay creators to present products inside their own content and credibility. It industrialised word of mouth, and it runs entirely on the metrics this glossary defines.
The brand buys borrowed trust: the audience's relationship with the creator transfers, partly, to the product.
Deals range from free product through paid posts to long ambassadorships. Pricing runs on reach, engagement rate and niche fit, with usage rights and exclusivity as multipliers. Disclosure (#ad) is the legal floor in every serious market.
Brands verify before paying, and the checks are standard now.
For creators, deals are the income that scales with credibility rather than platform payouts, which makes the audited metrics business assets: counts open doors, ratios close deals, and a media kit packages both.
For brands, the discipline is treating creators as channels with measurable cost per outcome: track code redemptions and link conversions, not applause. Many small creators beat one big one on cost per sale, which is why budgets keep sliding down the tiers.
Wildly variable: tier, engagement, niche and rights all move the price. The working rule on both sides: price against expected outcomes, and test small before committing budgets.
Yes, increasingly: nano and micro accounts with real niche trust convert well and cost little. Strong engagement at 3,000 followers beats dead engagement at 300,000.
Yes: paid promotion must be disclosed (#ad or platform tools) in most markets, and platforms provide branded-content labels. Skipping disclosure risks both regulator and platform trouble.
Related terms
Every definition lives in the full glossary, and the services behind the vocabulary are on the services page.