Data & Method
How much do advertising rights add to a campaign’s cost?
An advertising license is the right to use a creator’s content in paid media, on top of the post on their own profile. It costs extra, fixed per follower tier: knowing this avoids discovering mid-campaign that the content can’t be promoted.
Key takeaways
- On the Instagram rate card for the Italian market, an advertising license adds between +27% and +88% to the base package, depending on the tier.
- Its fee is fixed per tier while the base grows: on this market it therefore weighs proportionally more on the smaller tiers.
- Without a written agreement covering advertising use, that content cannot run in paid media.
Many budgets break because advertising rights are considered afterwards rather than upfront. A post on the creator’s profile and the use of that content in paid media are two different rights: the second carries its own cost, worth between +27% and +88% of the base package on the Instagram rate card for the Italian market.
| Follower tier | Share of the base |
|---|---|
| Junior, 2-10k | not on the rate card |
| Mid, 10-40k | +87.5% |
| Pro, 40-100k | +71.4% |
| Macro, 100-300k | +27% to +60% |
| Mega, 300k-1M | quoted |
| Celebrity, 1M+ | quoted |
Three tiers out of six carry a rate-card price. Below 10,000 followers and above 300,000 the license isn’t read off a table: it’s quoted along with the rest of the campaign. Macro is the only tier with a range rather than a single figure, because both the base and the license are defined as intervals and the two move independently.
The part that changes decisions is the direction: the license fee is fixed per tier while the base grows, so its share falls as the creator gets bigger. On this market the same license weighs +87.5% on a Mid and between +27% and +60% on a Macro. That holds for the Italian rate card, not for every market: where the price jump between two tiers is sharper, the order can change.
This is why the license should be agreed before production: settling it afterwards, with the content already published, costs more and is sometimes no longer possible — without a written agreement covering advertising use, that content cannot be promoted.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to pay more to use a creator’s content in advertising?
Yes. A post on the profile and use in paid media are different rights: on the Instagram rate card for the Italian market, an advertising license adds between +27% and +88% to the base package, depending on the creator’s tier. The fee is fixed per tier, so it can be known upfront.
Why does the license weigh more on smaller creators?
Because its fee is fixed per tier while the base package grows with size. On the Italian rate card the same license is worth +87.5% on a Mid-tier creator (10-40k) and between +27% and +60% on a Macro-tier one (100-300k). What changes is the ratio, not the license fee.
Can I decide on advertising rights once the campaign has started?
Better not. The license should be agreed before production: settling it afterwards, with the content already published, costs more and is sometimes no longer possible. Without a written agreement covering advertising use, that content cannot be promoted.