Creator Pricing, Performance & What’s Worth Paying For in 2026

In this episode, we share a recent keynote session at the Creator Economy Live West conference, where our team broke down the new creator economics with a simple rule: stop paying for tiers and start paying for outcomes. We share pricing models, rights that matter, and a measurement plan that connects organic storytelling to paid performance.

• Moving from follower tiers to performance baselines
• What to benchmark in past sponsored posts
• Flat, affiliate and hybrid pricing models
• Using hybrid to stretch limited budgets
• Negotiating usage windows and extensions
• When exclusivity is worth the premium
• Aligning creators to funnel KPIs
• Treating creators as media partners
• Building a measurement stack and lift studies
• Closing the loop between organic and paid

Trevant (formerly AdParlor) is the performance-native influencer agency built to solve the chaos of enterprise scale. Moving beyond isolated viral moments, Trevant provides the operational infrastructure to manage always-on creator ecosystems by combining "Creator Soul" with "Performance Architecture".

With a foundation of 17 years in paid media and over $650M in managed spend, they bridge the gap between authentic storytelling and attributable ROI, offering brands a unified system for safety governance, omnichannel amplification, and measurable business growth.

Learn more at: https://trevant.com/influenceatscale

Chapters

• 0:58 Hosts And Panelist Intros
• 3:03 Why Follower Tiers Don’t Predict Value
• 4:43 Benchmarking Creators On Performance
• 5:58 Pricing Models: Flat, Affiliate, Hybrid
• 9:33 Stretching Budgets With Hybrid Deals
• 10:23 Usage Rights And Pre‑Negotiated Extensions
• 12:04 The Real Cost Of Exclusivity
• 13:26 KPI Alignment To Avoid Overpaying
• 15:06 Pay For Storytelling And Trust
• 17:35 Make Measurement A Core Investment
• 19:43 Break Silos Between Organic And Paid
• 21:44 Monday Takeaways And Playbook

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:30

Super excited to be here today, and also even more excited to be here with our two panelists for a couple reasons. One, because selfishly they're part of my team and I think they're amazing in what they do. But I think after the session you'll also agree. I'll do some quick intros and then we can kind of kick off with some of the questions. So, first we have Daniella D'Angelo. So Daniela has been in the creator space for just short of about a decade now in agency capacities and primarily working hands-on keyboard and executing a lot of campaigns across smaller brands and all the way up to enterprise level and above, and also being able to oversee the team that really leads the daily strategy and operations for brands across a few different agencies before also joining us on the Ad Parler team.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19

Excited to be here.

SPEAKER_02: 1:20

And then we have Jared Levy. So Jared has been part of the Ad Perler organization for a whopping 13 years. So he's in teenage years now and comes to us from the paid media perspective on things. So comes from paid media and joined the creator organization. And what Jared brings is that strong performance and measurement discipline to creator programs, which we know in the today in a lot of sessions, measurement, as we all know, is a huge topic. And being able to apply that discipline to a creator program and hovering performance and measurement across both organic and paid. And as mentioned, our our topic today will really be digging into creator economics and what to be paying for and also what not to be paying for as we get into 2026 and some some tactical takeaways that hopefully you can get out of this session. Now, before we kick off, who here is responsible for either creator spend or overseeing some creator spend in a formal or informal capacity? Show of hands. Okay. So we got we got the right audience here. So we'll dig into a little bit of stage setting first. You know, I know we've heard quite a few times across different speakers today that influencer spends under scrutiny, right? They're looking for more performance, they're looking for more concrete measurement, they're looking to prove out the performance of these campaigns, whether that is that full funnel, bottom of the funnel program, upper funnel, depending on what it looks like. And so what we're gonna talk about is not only the very beginning and planning of the programs, but also how are some ways that you can help with negotiations, best practices, media planning, and providing some of that that discipline to your creator programs. So, Daniela, do you wanna do you wanna kick us off? All right, let's do it. So what do you think is one assumption about influencer pricing that no longer holds, but brands are still budgeting around to that?

SPEAKER_01: 3:20

Honestly, I'd say it's creator tiers. I think a lot of people are still thinking about, you know, they're a macro, so they're gonna be this much or they should be this much or anything like that. And really it's changed quite a bit. You can have a micro creator that is has just as many views as a mid-tier creator. So really moving away from that thought of just because of how many followers they have, that's how much we should be paying them, and really focusing on the performance that they're bringing to the campaign at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_02: 3:47

Yeah. No, I agree. I think that makes total sense. We're seeing uh definitely a shift away from just that focus on the creator tiers. I think that's something as an as an industry we even focus on for so long, right? You price up based on nano, micro, macro. But the reality is we all know there could be completely different benchmarks in terms of views and performance from a one micro to another, for example. What do you think is a follow-up question, something that advertisers should be benchmarking for as they think through creator pricing models?

SPEAKER_01: 4:15

Yeah. So something that we're always looking for is what is past performance, whether we've worked with this creator or we haven't worked with this creator. So looking at, you know, the past 10 pieces of partnered uh content on their channel, what are the views they're getting? What are the engagement they're getting? And really focusing on that. What are they bringing to our campaign? Are they hitting the CPM goals that maybe we're trying to hit, the view goals that we're trying to hit, anything like that? So really just looking at past performance is the best way that you're gonna be able to decide if this person's the right person to work with and if they should really be a part of your campaign. No, it makes total sense. Um, next question for Jared.

SPEAKER_00: 4:52

So how's it going?

SPEAKER_02: 4:54

What do you think is an economic shift that we're seeing in a space right now that brands might be underestimating?

SPEAKER_00: 5:01

So I think uh in terms of brands looking at creator as uh being performance media, there right now there's been a lack of a priority into measurement and making that just as important um as of a decision and investment in terms of actually having that be part of the campaign and ultimately um really being the baseline of how you're gonna be measuring the performance that ultimately is gonna back out to you know the price that you're gonna be paying for that creator.

unknown: 5:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 5:32

No, absolutely. And another one for you, Daniela. You know, what what are some of those pricing models, knowing that you're currently overseeing a team that manages from an agency perspective, multiple advertisers, multiple campaigns at any given time? You know, what are you and the team seeing as some of those most effective pricing models? What does that look like? And what is that different use case for each?

SPEAKER_01: 5:54

Yeah, so I think we all know the flat rate. That's the kind of main base point of what we typically are doing when it comes to influencer marketing. I think that's really useful when you're doing kind of more of an awareness campaign, if you're trying to understand maybe what type of content works and just kind of throwing a lot out there and really seeing and and learning from it, that's when that can work. The only problem with that is you don't have exact data that's coming back, or you're not really sure what their performance is going to be, and you're just paying them a price and they they're not really held to anything at the end of the day. So that is a little bit of a risk, but especially if you're trying something new, you want to try out new messaging, or maybe it's a new product or something, that's probably the best case to do it. Um, the next is kind of your typical affiliate, right? So we're not paying them a flat rate, we're only paying them based off of a performance. So they're making, you know, something based off of sales or a CPA or anything like that. That's really focused if you're doing like D to C. You don't really have a lot of budget. You don't really want to be paying these creators for nothing. You want to pay them for their performance. So if you're really performance driven, that's kind of what your company or your brands are looking for. Um, that's when you want to use that. Another model that we really like to take shape with is kind of a hybrid model. So we'll pay creators somewhat of a flat fee just so that we still have control over that content. We can repurpose that content the way we want to. Um, but we also do give them an opportunity to make some additional funds by giving them a sales goal or, you know, making a percentage off of whatever sales they get. So in that way, you have the best of both worlds. We're able to kind of help direct what that content looks like and have control over it, but and maybe don't pay them as much as maybe their usual rate is, but they still have an opportunity to make money. And if they feel really confident in their skills and that they are going to drive something, most will um agree to that type of model. So really just depending on what your KPIs are and your goals are, but those are typically the three that we're we're seeing the most of.

SPEAKER_02: 7:46

Yeah. Yeah. Do you do you see that as being an effective tool, especially for some of these advertisers that might not have, like most don't, unlimited creator budgets, right? And you're trying to think of how do we be as crappy as we possibly can with these dollars? You know, do you find that to be like a good negotiation tool for those that don't just have brand awareness budgets?

SPEAKER_01: 8:06

Absolutely. Yeah. I think if you really do have a limited budget and you are trying to test things, that's a great way to do it. You have the consideration that you already know, you have that messaging that you have. And so you're giving a little bit of control to the creator to push that. They, a lot of the times, some creators are just creating content for you because that's what you asked them to do. This gives them that little push to be a little bit stronger in the way that they're selling and be a little bit more involved in that, more so than just, okay, here's the script that you wanted me to say. I'm saying it in front of the camera, and then the post is live. So giving them that opportunity to make those additional funds is really great. And we, you can plan for that. You know, okay, this is the budget that I have. I'm gonna set aside this for the flat rate. And then we have this limit here that we can do for the potential sales that these creators are getting as well. So it is really great for especially new clients that are testing influencer for the first time. They're not quite sure what they want to do. It's a really great way to meet in the middle for that.

SPEAKER_02: 8:59

Yeah, right. And yeah, exactly. Win-win for both gives the creator a little bit of stake in the game, right? As they're as they're working on creating their content. You know, one thing I want to also talk about is some of those levers that impact pricing, because we know that pricing is just not an asilo. There's different things that impact pricing models, like exclusivity and usage and allow listing and and all of these things that go into creator pricing. Before we dig into that, just as a show of hands, for those of you that are currently working with creators or overseeing creator programs, how many of you are using creator content for less than three months usually? You know, so when you think about most of the creators that you're working with, would you say that you're using that content for a term of less than three months as a show of hands? Yeah, kind of like some of you, right? How many of you would you say are using it consistently more than three months? Okay, kind of a kind of a split, right? So yeah, that that makes sense. You know, I think one thing that we're we're definitely seeing is a lot of advertisers figuring out how to properly know those levers and what is that need to have versus the nice to have. So my question to you, Daniela, is you know, how do you think about some of those things like usage and exclusivity when it comes to pricing out creator programs?

SPEAKER_01: 10:13

Yeah, absolutely. So we we want to make sure we have access to that content. We all know that creators really perform well and their assets perform well in paid media. So making sure one, we do get usage of that content. I know it's something that we all talk about, everybody does, but I don't know if every single brand uses it to the full extent. So definitely want to make sure that we get that. The way that we typically run our campaigns is getting that for three months. We have a three month test. The, you know, your paid team can, you know, try different messaging, try different edits of that piece of content and see if it really works. If it does work and you do want to extend it, we also pre-negotiate what an extension could look like in our contracts and get the price for that. Because we know that, you know, I'm sure there's agents out in the in the audience right now that want to make a little more money if they know that we like the content and we want to extend it. So just pre-negotiating that. So you have, okay, if we want to extend this usage for another three months after the first three months is done, we'll give you an additional$2,000 for that or whatever that price point may be that you feel comfortable with, getting that already within your contract so that if the three months does come up, this asset's performing really well, you do want to extend it. It's a very quick and easy conversation with the creator and the agent to get that going and have it now for the next six months. So that's the first thing. Second thing is exclusivity. We really just have to make the decision. Is it more of an ego thing that you want the exclusivity, or is there really a reason why you want them to be exclusive to you and your brand and your product? Um, I think it's clear that most people do not just only use one product or one brand and only stick to that. They like to try different things, especially when it comes to makeup or fashion or anything like that. So really thinking about that a little bit more clearly, we do see anywhere between a 25 to 40% increase, depending on how long you want that exclusivity for. So if you are really looking at the CPMs that you're trying to hit, or if your CFO is down your neck of, hey, you're spending way too much money and how do I get the, you know, ROI on this, maybe that's something that you want to look at and make sure that it's not something that you're overpaying for when you really maybe don't necessarily need it. So those are kind of the three things that we're looking at when we're when we're looking at our creators and the the types of creators that we want to work with as well.

SPEAKER_02: 12:29

Yeah. No, and that that makes total sense. And it's a time where also, you know, creators are becoming more and more aware of their worth and talent managers, same thing, right? You're understanding that your talent is bringing a lot to the table and making sure that you're getting paid for, of course, exclusivity and usage, but also ensuring from a brand perspective, they're not necessarily overpaying for something that they're not getting full leverage from. Absolutely. Um, now let's dig a little bit into the like we'll call the media planning component of influencer. So, Jared, where do you think that a lot of advertisers might be overpaying today because they might be going and optimizing towards perhaps the wrong KPI?

SPEAKER_00: 13:10

Yeah. So when when we think about creator and especially on the performance side of things, um we need to make sure that we're aligned from the get-go uh in terms of what is that business KPI that we're looking to get at. Hiring an awareness creator and then expecting that they're gonna be driving immediate sales, you're gonna be disappointed at the end of the day and probably be overpaying um, you know, for that creator. And so that that's the first thing in terms of just misalignment, I would say, between what is that KPI that you're looking to drive and what is that creator actually gonna be able to do for you.

SPEAKER_02: 13:44

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. It's and I think doing that planning process is critical, right? Because I think that is something that you I think most advertisers, we see them strategizing for the creative concepts and the creators and the big ideas and all those things that go into the creator program, but really thinking more intently about what does this media mix look like? And how do we treat our influencers as our media partners in this? You know, what does that top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of the funnel look like? And how do we optimize across all three of those things to ensure we're bringing on the right partners, we're doing the right concepts and we're aligning to the right KPIs. Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. Um, Samila, what do you think that is something that brands when they think about partnering with creators that they think that they're paying for, but what they're actually getting out of it instead?

SPEAKER_01: 14:38

I think we're always thinking the audience is what we're paying for, but I really think we have to shift the mindset to we're paying for a story, we're paying for an experience, we're paying for somebody's trust and loyalty and that audience's trust and loyalty into that creator. So really rethinking and reshifting the way that we're going to these creators and allowing them to have a little bit of that we leeway to talk about their experience with the product. I think we can all say we've watched some creator content that we know it was a script and we can tell that they're not super passionate about the product or the service or whatever the brand may be. Um, so not worrying as much about obviously we want to make sure that the audience is the audience that we're trying to hit from, you know, who your target audience is, but not focusing so much on that and making sure that that content is telling that story because that's also going to be the best in paid um media as well, where you know, we get to amplify that that story and that content. We just had a creator in a in a past campaign over um Black Friday, Cyber Monday. We already know that that is a crazy time. It is not easy to break through in those moments. And we had a piece of content where the creator basically just talked about, you know, them and their story and their family. And she just had a new baby and she was explaining all of these things and something that they really love doing was traveling together. And we did not mention the brand, which was is a cruise brand at all in the first little bit of the content. Only near the end did we talk about the fact that there was a promo going on, there was a sale, and she was our top performer, both organically. She got 95% of the clicks organically that we had for the entire campaign, as well from the paid side as well. So thinking of it that way of you know, she's telling the story to her audience. That's what got them interested in it. And it's not something that they're just scrolling past because they realize it's just another brand deal. So really just looking into that and making sure we're we're giving them the opportunity to tell that story as well.

SPEAKER_02: 16:32

Yeah, no, absolutely. And yeah, really working with those creators as as partners, right? And not as a transactional, hey, yeah, I'm gonna pay you for this. Good luck to you, right? But like, how can we really work closely and treat them like true partners, knowing that we have this shared collective goal that we're working towards together? You know, which which brings me to my next question, Jared, right? So as we look to and the industry really shifts to treating creators as more of a media strategy, what are some things that you think that we could be doing as an industry differently?

SPEAKER_00: 17:07

So going back to um, you know, the measurement focus, I think it it's gonna come down to if you haven't started measurement, it's it's time to get started. And you can start it a number of different ways. Um, you know, for a lot of our awareness clients, it's getting started on a brand lift study. Um, that is an amazing way to have a better understanding of how creators are actually performing from an intent standpoint. And there are numerous third parties out there that can help um, you know, get that off the ground. Um, additionally, thinking about incrementality um as a way that uh you can prove out the incremental value of the organic, um, but also having paid in there as well, um, as being something that uh I believe you know uh we're gonna see you know more of this upcoming year. And something that I would say if if your end goal is driving sales and actual performance with a business outcome, you'd be dumb not to invest in um a third-party tool or getting your uh you know, getting some insight from your um data science team or your paid media team, just learning, you know, what are they doing on a day in and day out basis? Because um, at least on our side, you know, we're very much a tight team um in terms of the creator um and and paid amplification side. And, you know, us being able to work together um and being on the same page and aligned has has really helped us out in terms of um not only executing for our clients, but then also um being able to prove out the value uh to the brands that we work with.

SPEAKER_02: 18:31

Yeah, no, absolutely. It's really not treating or organic strategies in a silo when it comes to influencers, right? Because you're treating it in a silo and you're you know, and we see this a lot with the times with the advertisers and in-house teams where organic sits here and and paid sits here, and they're like, well, yeah, my paid team just takes the content and they run with it. And it's like, well, do you know what they're optimizing towards? What's working, what's not working? Are you sharing that feedback back to the creator, especially for those brand ambassador programs that you're doing and you're really investing in those creators long term? It's in your best interest to make sure that partnership is is really successful, seeing what works well on organically and also paid, and sharing that feedback back to them because they see what they see from an analytics perspective. They're not seeing the full picture. And it's helpful for them to be able to know, okay, yeah, what's what's that messaging that's performing well? What's not performing well, what can I do better? What are those some best practices? So, because you know, they, as that partner, they a lot of these creators that you work with, especially if they are a good creator, they they care about that, right? They care about driving that strong performance.

SPEAKER_00: 19:33

Yeah, and I will say to follow up on just the importance of measurement, we all know that, you know, creator in general, there isn't one way to measure. There are numerous different tools um, you know, that you could be leveraging for directional purposes. And so, you know, there isn't a secret sauce that one tool is gonna work over another. It's gonna be very unique to the the use case of running that campaign. And uh making sure one that you're going through an exercise of evaluating the different tools that are out there. We just did that in Q4. It's worked out really well just to have an understanding of the landscape. Definitely recommend if you haven't um to do that at least on a yearly basis because it's gonna save you a lot of time, you know, moving forward and you might be able to learn something new.

SPEAKER_02: 20:13

Yeah. Yeah, measurement is huge. And I think putting together those formal measurement programs and leveraging those third-party tools is is huge because we're already a lot, you know, a lot of teams are already doing that and have been doing that for years when it comes to paid, but applying that back to the applying that discipline towards organic creator partnerships or you know, including amplification as part of that is now becoming more of a from a nice to have to more of a need to have as we have a lot of these conversations with advertisers. Absolutely. Now I'll ask this question to to both of you, and maybe all three of us can can answer this. If you're to get just kind of the one key takeaway of one thing that advertisers can either start doing or stop doing, you know, as they're back in the office on Monday, opening up your laptop, starting to get to work, another day of working with influencers and you know, changing lives one influencer at a time. What is one thing that you think that they could do to either do more of or less of in 2026, starting on Monday?

SPEAKER_00: 21:16

Uh, why don't you go first and I'll I'll pick it up after.

SPEAKER_01: 21:19

Um, I think it's really looking at historical data, um, starting to pull that together. Look at your past two, three years of influencer campaigns, how have things been going? Um, what are the CPMs that you've been hitting, the views that you've been hitting, and really start creating a model for yourself. So um something that we do at Ad Parlor and I've been doing for like Christina mentioned, the 10 almost 10 years that I've been doing this is just um amalgamating all of that data from every single campaign that we run. Um and we pull it together and that's how we update, you know, our pricing models. This is how we can tell our clients and our advertisers, this is how many creators that we can expect, this is the type of content that we can expect. And also we know what creators are working versus which ones aren't working because we have this data of knowing, okay, these typical microcreators have been able to hit these CPMs, have been able to get us these many clicks or you know, this click through rate. We've now worked with this other creator and they're not able to get that for us. This is now the level and the average that we're hitting, and they're not able to do that. So that's not someone we want to continue working with. So, my recommendation and something that I would love for everybody to start doing is to have all of that, share that with, you know, the partners that you're working with, share that with creators as well, these are the baseline. That we want and that we're trying to hit. So they also know what they're doing. They don't know if they're not performing unless we tell them what those uh those goals are. So uh just being really transparent in that in that front, I would say.

SPEAKER_00: 22:39

Yeah, and I would say on my end, um a few parts to it, but the main one that I see being successful and has to be successful is have an alignment from uh the creator side, organic, um, and the amplification or paid media side. You you have to be able to speak the same language. You have to think about that content calendar, what's coming out. How can an awareness campaign drive you know retargeting for a branded campaign and making sure that you're on the same page? We've seen too many brands where it's so siloed that you know there is gonna be some inefficiency when it comes to what's in market. Um, you know, what does that messaging look like? If is the messaging, you know, uh the same? Are we running the same promo or is it do you have conflicting messaging? You know, that is extremely important in terms of running an efficient campaign and ultimately is gonna help in terms of being able to um, you know, get the most efficient price um within the investment that you're making, and then ultimately, you know, run a uh a well-oiled machine, which is kind of the goal overall, you know, for a lot of brands out there that we work with.

SPEAKER_02: 23:43

No, absolutely, and I totally agree. And I think from from my my perspective, it's probably pretty similar to to your answers in terms of formalizing that what that media plan looks like, right? And we're kind of you guys were kind of talking about this and hinting at this, is really formalizing what what is that media plan? You know, we we do a lot of strategies and creative concepts and and all of that that always goes into our creator strategies, but what is that full media mix? And then how do we use different creator strengths for different outcomes? You know, some creators are so good, they're so good at storytelling, right? And they're so good at driving that authentic content that really aligns best with their audience, but also the typical content that they create and integrate it so well, let them shine, let them do that, let them, because that content is going to perform better than the overly scripted content and also the, you know, probably gonna piss the creator off in the process, right? We all know that where it's like, oh, we have to kind of limit them, right? So understanding, okay, what are those creators that are really meant to be creative versus the creators that are really good at more of that, you know, performance-oriented type of content, more of that stronger call to action, direct sale, directing their audience to a landing page. Some creators are amazing at that. And it's like great. They're great for CGC to apply it to pay. They could still be posting it on their own native channels, but then we can also amplify that content to drive more of that, that full funnel outcome. So really having that approach and picking those creators based on those different funnels, those different outcomes, those different KPIs. Because we see a lot of, you know, advertisers will hover over the brand and the performance teams. And you have to really figure out how to fix it for both, right? How do we ensure that we're putting together a program that works for both brand and performance teams? Great. Well, I think those are all the questions that I have for you guys today. So thank you so much. And thank you for you both for being here with me today. And thank you to the audience for sitting here and listening to our session. If you have any questions about career pricing, we're always happy to talk shop. Again, come find us, happy to chat and hope everyone enjoys the rest of their day in Vegas. Thank you.