Value
Paid Social Value, in one paragraph
Paid Social Value answers a single question: if you had bought this exact result through Meta and TikTok ads instead, what would the invoice have been? It converts creator content into the one unit a media buyer, a CFO, or a board already knows how to judge.
It is reported as a multiple of the campaign investment rather than a dollar figure, so it stays comparable across campaigns of different sizes.
Paid Social Value
PSV · reported as a multiple
What the same delivery would have cost through paid social advertising.
How it is calculated
delivered performance × current Meta and TikTok ad benchmarks = PSV
The benchmark model is repriced every quarter against live ad rates. PSV is then divided by the campaign investment and reported as a multiple.
How to say it
"This is what you would have paid Meta and TikTok for the same outcome. We set a goal of 1.5 times the investment, and this campaign returned 2.4 times."
The caveat that matters
Never compare PSV across years without naming which model each number used. Because the formula reprices quarterly, a lower multiple year over year can simply mean ad inventory got cheaper. It does not mean the campaign underperformed. Say which model, or do not compare.
PSV goal
The floor, not the forecast
Every campaign is set a goal of 1.5x the investment before it begins.
The goal is deliberately conservative. Budget goes into creators rather than into padding a projection, which is why campaigns tend to clear the goal by a wide margin. A goal that is never missed is worth more than a goal that flatters.
How to say it
"1.5x is the goal we commit to. It is a floor, not a forecast. Historically we come in well above it."
Delivery
Delivered views
The headline metric · sometimes shown as total views
Total views on campaign content, repeats included.
This is the promise Sponty makes and the number every projection is quoted in. It counts content actually watched rather than an audience that theoretically could have seen it.
Why views can exceed total audience
Content travels past a creator's own followers. A campaign can deliver more views than the roster has followers, and routinely does. That is the mechanism this channel is bought for.
The caveat that matters
Views is a higher bar than audience, not a softer one. If a client asks why reporting moved from total audience to delivered views, the answer is that the goal changed from reach to activation, so the metric followed the goal. Audience is potential. Views is delivery.
Total audience
Follower count across the roster
The combined follower count of every creator on the campaign. The ceiling, not the result.
How to say it
"Total audience is how many people could see this. It is the top of the funnel."
The caveat that matters
Do not rank creators by it and do not lead with it. A large total audience with a low local share is a national campaign wearing a local jersey.
Content fulfillment
Commissioned versus delivered
How many pieces of content the contract called for, against how many actually posted.
Creators frequently post more than contracted. Overdelivery is reported because it is real value the client did not pay for, and because it is a fair signal of how the creator relationship went.
Accounts activated
Roster size
The number of creator accounts that published content on the campaign.
Usually set as a minimum in the scope rather than a fixed count, so the roster can be built for audience fit instead of to a quota.
Audience quality
In-market audience
Verified local · the metric that should lead every conversation
The share of the roster's audience that the data can place inside the target market.
How it is measured
The audience platform places a follower in a city using public signals from their account: location in the bio, geotags on their posts, language, and general public activity. Enough signal, the account gets placed. Not enough signal, it does not get placed anywhere.
How to say it
"34% of the audience we reached is verified in-market, against a 20% goal." Always pair the number with the goal. The number alone is a fact. The number against the goal is proof.
The caveat that matters
This number is a floor, and the real local share runs higher every time. Plenty of real local people never give the platform enough signal to be placed: the person who scrolls and never posts, the private account, the account with no location in the bio. They are counted in total audience and not counted as local. Never say the remainder is not local. Say it is either outside the market or unplaceable in the data. A sharp client will catch the difference.
Audience authenticity
Real-human share
The share of accounts engaging with a creator that read as real people rather than bots or purchased followers.
How to say it
"Nobody wants to pay for bot likes. We screen every creator on this before they make the approval list, against an 80% threshold."
Audience interest
Category alignment
The share of a creator's audience that engages with content in the categories chosen for the brand, picked from more than thirty.
How to say it
"They are local and they care about this category. Both matter. Either one alone is a miss."
On-target age
Demographic fit
The share of the audience inside the age range set for the campaign.
The caveat that matters
College towns distort this, and so does September. A student's location and age signals read from where their account has history, which is usually their hometown. A freshman who moved three weeks ago still reads as somewhere else, and it corrects over the semester. If students are part of the target, expect a September pull to run low.
Engagement
Engagement rate
ER
Engagements measured against the audience that saw the content.
Benchmarks move by category. Institutional and financial content runs lower than food, travel, or family content, so an engagement rate is only meaningful against a category benchmark rather than against another campaign in a different vertical.
Engagement mix
Likes, comments, shares, saves, story engagements
Which kinds of engagement the content produced, as shares of the total.
Worth reading rather than skipping. Shares and saves signal content people found useful enough to keep or pass on, which is usually the better predictor of whether a campaign moved anyone.
Views-to-follower ratio
Efficiency per creator
How hard one creator's content worked relative to their size.
This is where small creators beat big ones, and it is the number to reach for when defending a roster of mid-size local creators against a client who wanted a bigger name.
Content and rights
Owned content
Licensed assets · sometimes UGC
Content the client licenses and can use in their own advertising, separate from the creator posting it on their own account.
The caveat that matters
Budget that buys assets does not buy audience. When a campaign includes owned content, the view projection comes down proportionally, because that portion of the budget is purchasing content rather than access to an audience. Owned content is measured on asset delivery, not on PSV.
Usage rights
Licensing window
How long, and in what channels, the client may use creator content in paid media.
Priced as an add-on in windows, typically 30 days, 90 days, or 12 months. Rights are tracked so nothing gets used past its licensed window, which is a real legal exposure when it goes unmanaged.
Whitelisting
Spark ads · creator-handle advertising
Running paid media through the creator's own handle rather than the brand's.
The ad appears to come from a person the viewer already follows, which usually outperforms the same creative on a brand account. Requires specific permissions from the creator and is scoped as an add-on.
Exclusivity
Category lockout
A period during which a creator will not work with a competing brand in the same category.
Priced by length and by how tightly the category is drawn. A tight lockout costs meaningfully more than a broad one, because it removes more of the creator's earning ability.