What Does a YouTube Sponsorship Cost?

What you are actually buying

A YouTube sponsorship buys a creator's time, their editorial judgment and a share of their audience's attention. What changes the price is how much of the video you get, how long your brand stays in it, and what you are allowed to do with the footage afterwards.

The five things that move the price

• Audience size and engagement. Bigger channels cost more, but the number that matters is the views a channel reliably earns, not its subscriber count.
• Format. A dedicated video costs more than an integrated segment, because it is the creator's whole video rather than a section inside one.
• Exclusivity. Keeping competitors off a creator's channel for a period has a real cost to that creator, and is priced accordingly.
• Usage rights. Running the video as a paid ad, or using it on your own channels, is a separate right and is priced separately from the organic post.
• Timing. Short lead times and fixed launch dates cost more, because they limit which creators are still free to take the work.

The two ways campaigns are bought

Almost every creator campaign is bought one of two ways, and which one you choose changes what you are agreeing to.

A flat fee per deliverable

You agree a price for a named creator and a named format. The cost is known up front, and the performance is whatever the video earns.

A cost per thousand views

You agree a price per thousand views against a target. Our brand partnership roster publishes a guaranteed view figure for every channel, so a lineup can be sized before anything is booked. Where a view target is agreed up front, we agree the resolution up front too - either a pro-rated adjustment, or we keep running content until the target is reached.

How to size a budget before you know rates

You do not need a rate card to set a budget. Work backwards from reach: decide how many people you want to reach, look at the guaranteed views published for each channel on the roster, and count how many channels it takes to get there. That gives you a lineup size, and a lineup size is what a budget range has to cover.

Why agencies quote per campaign instead of publishing rates

A published rate card would be wrong the day it went up. The same creator costs a different amount for a short integration with no usage rights than for a dedicated video with a competitor exclusion and six months of paid usage. Quoting per campaign is how the price stays honest to what you are actually asking for.

What happens when you send a brief

Tell us the product, the audience you want to reach, the outcome you are measuring, your timings and a budget range. A person reads it and replies with a recommended creator lineup, the reasoning behind each name, and indicative rates against your range. Nothing is booked until scope, rates and timings are agreed.