A creator is a person who makes and publishes their own content on platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube or LinkedIn and builds an audience around it. Businesses work with creators either to reach that audience or to have content made that the business then uses on its own channels and in ads.
How working with creators works
The word covers a few different arrangements, and it helps to know which one you are buying:
- Audience creators. The value is their following. This is classic influencer marketing: the creator posts about your product to people who already trust them.
- UGC creators. The value is the content itself. They produce videos and photos in the natural style of user-generated content, which you post or run as ads. Their own audience may be small or irrelevant.
- Affiliate creators. They are paid commission on sales made through their tracked links or discount codes, often with no upfront fee.
Payment can be a fee, free products, commission or a mix. The agreement should cover the deliverables, deadlines, who approves the content before it goes live, and usage rights: whether you may use the content in paid ads, on your website or in email, and for how long. On Meta, running ads through a creator’s own handle requires their permission through the platform’s partnership tools.
Why it matters
Creator content tends to look like the rest of the feed rather than like an advert, so people are more likely to watch it. For a small business without a video budget, a few UGC creators can produce enough variations to test several messages in ads, which is hard to do any other way.
In the UK the rules matter as much as the creative. Under the ASA’s CAP Code, a post is advertising when the brand has paid the creator in any form and has some control over the content, and affiliate posts that earn commission count as marketing too. Advertising has to be obviously identifiable, so the usual answer is a clear label such as #ad at the start of the caption or on the video itself. The business is responsible as well as the creator, and the ASA does publish rulings that name brands. Gifted products with no conditions attached still raise disclosure questions under consumer protection law, which the CMA enforces.
Common mistakes
- No written agreement on usage rights, so content made for one organic post ends up in ads without permission.
- Vague or hidden labels such as #sp, #collab or a disclosure buried among dozens of hashtags.
- Choosing creators on follower numbers rather than on whether their audience is the right age, area and interest.
- No tracking, so nobody can tell whether the partnership brought any sales.
- Rewriting a creator’s script into ad copy, which removes the reason their content worked.
How to act on it
Decide first whether you want reach, content or sales, because that tells you which kind of creator to look for and how to pay them. Write a short brief with the key message, what must not be said (prices that change, claims you cannot prove) and the label the post will carry. Put usage rights and approval in writing before anything is filmed.
Give each creator their own tagged link built with UTM parameters or a unique code so results can be traced. Check that every live post shows the paid partnership label or an equivalent clear disclosure. When creator videos are going into paid campaigns, I build and test them as part of my Facebook video, Reels and Stories ads work.