Which result should I pay creators for: sales, clicks, views or watch time?

Views count the plays of a video. Watch time is the total time it was watched, and reach the number of accounts that saw it at least once. The closer the metric is to revenue, the less risk you carry and the more the creator does: if nobody buys, the creator gets nothing. For a product nobody knows yet, a base fee can be what gets creators to say yes at all. A well-known product at a good price is easier to pay for on sales alone.

With an affiliate programme, creators can link to your products and earn a commission on sales. Being able to does not mean they will. Many partners in a programme never become active, and the creators you most want for your brand do not post without a reason. A listing in a programme does not bring reach on its own, however good the commission looks on paper.

The real job is to get creators to take part, many of them in the same period, and then to see who actually sells. The metric you pay for only helps with taking part if creators get something they can plan on: a base fee, or a shared budget for a fixed period that is split by results agreed in advance. And if a platform shows up in your programme as a single partner, you need its figures per creator to see who sells.

You count sales and clicks yourself or through your affiliate programme. Watch time and reach are measured by the platform, and you usually only see them when the creator shares them, as a screenshot or export. The view count is often public, on YouTube for instance on the watch page, but only the platform counts it. You cannot recount any of these figures. So agree beforehand which figure counts, for which period and on which date it is taken.

A sale is only final once the period for withdrawal and returns is over. In Germany, consumers who order from an online shop usually have a right of withdrawal (§ 312g(1) BGB, the German Civil Code). The period is 14 days (§ 355(2) BGB) and for goods generally only starts when they arrive (§ 356(2) BGB). If you pay per sale, expect several weeks between purchase and settlement.

Since 24 August 2026, YouTube has called its previous definition of a view an “engaged view” (“aktive Wiedergabe” in the German YouTube Help): someone clicks to watch or keeps watching past the first few seconds. According to YouTube, most analytics and the earnings in the YouTube Partner Program are still based on engaged views. View counts from before and after that date are therefore not directly comparable.

The Instagram details come from Meta’s metric documentation for developers. There, Meta still lists views and total reel play time as metrics in development, and “views” only counts organic plays: if the same post is promoted as an ad, plays from the ad are not included. What a creator sees in the app may differ. Write the metric into your agreement under the name it has in the creator’s analytics, and ask to be shown where it appears.

Paid ads follow different rules. For a skippable in-stream ad, for example, YouTube counts a TrueView view only when someone watches at least 30 seconds of an ad longer than 30 seconds, watches an ad of 11 to 30 seconds in full, or interacts with it. According to TikTok’s Business Help Center, which is aimed at advertisers, a view of an in-feed video counts from the start of playback, excluding replays; there are also 2-second and 6-second views. It does not say if a creator’s analytics count the same way. If you compare a creator’s price per view with the price per view of an ad, you are comparing different things. All details as read on 20 October 2026.

A price per click makes sense when the purchase happens where your link cannot see it: in a store, in an app, or weeks later after a long decision, as with furniture. The click is then the last result you can count reliably. To compare it with a sales commission, convert it into cost per sale.

1. The formula: cost per sale = price per click ÷ conversion rate. The conversion rate is the share of clicks that turn into an order.
2. Say you pay €0.20 per click and 2% of clicks lead to an order. One sale then costs you €0.20 ÷ 0.02 = €10.
3. If the conversion rate drops to 1%, for instance because many people only browse, a sale costs €20. With a price per click you carry that risk yourself; with a sales commission, the creator does.
4. The other way round: if a sale may cost you at most €15, your highest price per click is €15 × 2% = €0.30. How much a sale may cost follows from your margin.
5. Use the conversion rate of your visits from social media, not the average for your whole shop. All figures here are assumptions, not benchmarks.

Say one video brings 40,000 views, 400 clicks and 10 orders at €60 net each, so €600 in revenue. CPM usually means cost per thousand impressions; here it is cost ÷ views × 1,000. Cost per sale: cost ÷ orders. This puts four different offers on a like-for-like basis.

Run the numbers for a weak result too. If the same video brings only 2 orders with the same views and clicks, one sale costs €200 with the flat fee, €160 with the price per 1,000 views, €60 with the price per click and €84 with the base fee plus commission. In the same case the creator receives €400, €320, €120 or €168. That spread shows who carries the risk in each offer and which offer a creator can plan on.

A bonus at a threshold belongs in the calculation. Say the base fee plus commission offer adds €100 once 30 orders are reached. At 29 orders a sale costs €14.17; at exactly 30 it is €520 ÷ 30 = €17.33 instead of €14 without the bonus. The cost per sale jumps at the threshold. Check that figure against your margin.

With wyrld Boost you take your budget straight to creators who feature your products. You set the products, the period and the KPIs for the payout, such as sales, clicks, watch time or reach. Many creators can take part at the same time, and each of them decides if they join. wyrld measures clicks through the links, shops report sales, and creators upload watch time and reach from their analytics. You agree before the start how the pool is shared. You also decide in which shops people buy, and creators label Boost campaign videos as advertising.

With the brand and shop subscription you see every day which creators feature your products, who brings clicks and, where the shop reports sales, who sells. You set your own terms for individual creators, such as a higher commission or a bonus. In an affiliate programme wyrld shows up as a single partner; the subscription shows the creators behind it. After a Boost campaign you see which creator delivered which results. Pricing for the subscription and Boost is available on request.

You connect your products through your existing affiliate programme, through which creators can usually already pick them, or directly with wyrld. In the programme you pay on your own terms per click, per sale or both. We are happy to talk through which of them fits your goal: Boost, the subscription or your own terms.