TrueRights launches calculator for fair pricing in the creator economy
TrueRights, a British startup aiming to help standardise the growing creator economy, has launched a calculator tool aimed at providing brands and creators with fairer pricing estimates.
The Usage Calculator uses thousands of real-world data points to model usage rates based on variables like media type, platform, region, campaign duration, exclusivity and whether usage is organic or paid. It draws from analysis of past creator campaigns, media buying costs, creator compensation rates and platform performance metrics.
The calculator also allows brands to take greater control over how they use and pay for creator content, TrueRights argues, by eliminating unnecessary spend.
For paid media, for example, there is a performance-based usage model built into the calculator. Instead of paying a flat fee, brands and creators can agree to pay only for impressions served.
Such a model aims to limit wastage and improve visibility over campaign investment. For creators, it ensures against undercompensation if their work reaches a larger market than predicted.
Talent or their agents are also able to generate quotes for work and share them more easily to ensure negotiations with brands are grounded in predictive data and standardised terms, which are still able to be customised to fit different talent.
Speaking to The Media Leader, TrueRights founder and CEO Ben Woollams compared the creator economy to “the Wild West” when it comes to contracts between brands and creators.
Specifically, he insisted there is all too often a lack of fair value for creators’ work and lamented that influencer and talent agencies take unfair percentages of revenue from usage rights without sufficient transparency.
“There’s three things we want out of this,” he described. “One is fair compensation for both sides.
“Second is we want to make it performance media-based, so how do we make creative and media bind, how do we forecast spend and move the industry forward?
“And third is how do we ensure the utmost transparency and efficiency? We can’t have hidden fees. We can’t have rights not activated in the right way.
“If this industry really wants to scale and we want people to be compensated fairly for the hard work that goes in, then we need to make sure that they’re protected in this sort of way and that they have guidance throughout”.
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Woollams, who previously worked at influencer marketing agency Influencer, noted that influencer and talent agencies often skim large percentages, sometimes between 40% and 50% of margins, on top of talent agency fees, that come at the cost of brands and creators.
“How much money is really getting paid out to the creators here, and how much is the brand getting done over because they haven’t got visibility of what their costs look like?” Woollams asks. “It’s a massive thing in terms of that transparency piece”.
Influencer marketing has become increasingly popular as younger audiences have shifted to using social platforms for entertainment. According to WPP Media’s latest forecast, user-generated content will account for a greater share of ad revenue than professional content this year, with creator-generated revenue anticipated to grow 20% in 2025 to $184.9bn and more than double to $376.6bn by 2030.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has previously estimated UK adspend on influencers more than tripled between 2019 and 2023.
“Influencers are taking up more of the media budget than they ever have before, and that’s typically for the purpose of reusing those assets across different media outputs,” said Woollams. “It’s going to be scrutinised even further moving forward to make sure both sides are getting a fair deal”.
Woollams recalled running campaigns for a global FMCG brand while at Influencer, where he bought “blanket rights for three months” for 300 assets. Yet in the end the client used just 10, resulting in not only “massive budget waste” but also an underpayment toward the creators whose assets were used effectively.
According to Woollams, the success of improved transparency efforts provided by calculator depends on a mutual desire for a less wasteful creator economy.
“If we want this to work, both parties need to agree to a fair market”, he said. “You can’t have one wanting to have a premium over the other”.
TrueRights, which currently has 10 to 12 staff, is soon looking to incorporate agentic AI into the calculator to surface and act upon recommendations for brands and creators.
The startup is also working on efforts to allow creators to fairly license their likeness to brands wanting to develop AI creative assets.
To support the endeavour, it has employed an advisory council with eight leading talent who advise on their licensing needs.
“How do we get talent to be at the forefront and driving what this product looks like?” Woollams asked rhetorically. “Because it’s not for us to mandate”.
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