Brand Deals, Sponsorship & Business
Influencer marketing
Also called: creator marketing, influencer campaign
Seen from the brand side, this is a media channel with people in it. The buys run from a sixty-second read inside somebody's video to a dedicated one, an affiliate arrangement, or paying to run a creator's post as an advert against the brand's own targeting.
What makes it a discipline is the apparatus around it: briefs, contracts, usage rights, exclusivity windows, tracked links and a cost per acquisition somebody defends at the end of the quarter. Disclosure is not optional on either side. UK advertising rules require a paid partnership to be identified clearly, the US rules say the same, and the liability lands on the brand as well as on the creator.