A creator in Amman posts a sponsored video for a telecom brand, gets paid, and moves on. Eight months later the video is running as a paid ad on every platform in the country, cut into three versions, with the creator’s face on a billboard outside a mall. The creator was paid once, for one post. The contract said the brand could use the content “across its channels in perpetuity.” Nobody read it, because the deal was small and the brand manager was pleasant.
A creator in Riyadh signs with a skincare brand for a three-video series. Six weeks later a larger competitor offers four times the fee. The contract has a clause preventing work with “competing brands in the beauty category” for twelve months after the last post. The creator has to say no, and the twelve months have barely started.
Both stories are common. Both were avoidable. Usage rights and exclusivity are the two clauses that determine what a brand deal is actually worth, and in a region where contracts are often an afterthought to a WhatsApp agreement, they are the two that creators most often sign without pricing.
Usage rights: what the brand may do with the video
When a creator makes a sponsored video, the default is that the creator made a piece of content and the brand paid for it to appear on the creator’s channel. Usage rights are everything beyond that. May the brand repost it on its own accounts? Run it as a paid ad? Cut it, dub it, put it on a screen in a shop? For how long, and in which countries?
Each of those is worth money, and the reason is simple: they replace something the brand would otherwise have to pay for. A video that runs as a paid ad is doing the job of an ad, and ads cost money to make. A creator who grants that right for free has made the brand a commercial and charged for a post.
The wording to watch is broad and vague: “all channels,” “in perpetuity,” “worldwide,” “in any media now known or later developed.” That last phrase is copied from film contracts and has no place in a deal for a Reel. The wording to insist on is specific: which platforms, which uses, which countries, and a fixed period, typically thirty to ninety days for paid amplification, after which the right expires unless renewed. Renewal is where the value lives. A brand that wants to keep running a video that is working should pay to keep running it, and a creator whose video is working should be paid for it working.
Pricing the rights
There is no single regional rate, and anyone who says there is has not seen many contracts. But there is a structure that holds up. Organic posting on the creator’s own channel is the base fee. Reposting on the brand’s own accounts is a modest addition, because it is cheap for the brand and the exposure helps the creator too. Paid usage, where the brand puts money behind the content, is a significant addition, often expressed as a percentage of the base fee per month of use. Broadcast, out-of-home and retail use are separate negotiations entirely, because they take the creator’s face out of the internet and into a context they did not choose.
A video that runs as a paid ad is doing the job of an ad. A creator who grants that right for free has made the brand a commercial and charged for a post.
The point is not the exact numbers. It is that each right has a line on the invoice, so that a brand asking for more is asking for something priced rather than something free. Creators who present rights this way find that brands often drop the broad requests, because the broad request was a habit, not a need.
Exclusivity: what the creator may not do next
Exclusivity is the brand paying for the creator to not work with competitors. It is a reasonable request in principle. A brand that has just paid for a video about its phone does not want the creator holding a rival’s phone the following week. The problem is scope and duration, and the region’s contracts get both wrong in the brand’s favor by default.
Scope is the question of who counts as a competitor. “The telecom category” in a Gulf market might be three companies, which is manageable. “The beauty category” is hundreds of brands, and a clause excluding all of them is excluding a large share of a beauty creator’s income. Duration is how long the exclusion lasts. Thirty days around the campaign is normal. Twelve months after the final post, for a single video, is a year of a creator’s career priced at one fee.
Exclusivity should be priced like a rental. The brand is renting the creator’s category for a period, and the longer and wider the rental, the more it costs. A short, narrow exclusivity can be folded into the base fee. A long, broad one should cost a meaningful multiple, and a creator should be willing to walk away from one that is not paid for, because the cost of the deal is not the fee. It is the fee minus everything the exclusivity prevents.
The words to change
A few phrases account for most of the damage. “In perpetuity” should become a fixed term. “All media” should become a list. “Worldwide” should become the countries the brand actually operates in. “Competing brands” should become a named list, or at least a named subcategory. “At the brand’s discretion” should become “with the creator’s written approval” for any use beyond what is listed. And “the content” should be defined, so that a right to use one video is not read as a right to use the whole series, the raw footage, or the creator’s likeness in general.
These are small edits and most brand managers accept them without argument, because the original wording came from a template and nobody was attached to it. The creators who lose are the ones who never ask.
Before you sign
Read the two clauses. Price them separately. Write the rights and the exclusivity into the fee proposal so the brand sees what it is buying. If the contract arrives after the price is agreed and contains rights that were not discussed, that is not a formality, it is a renegotiation, and it should be treated as one.
None of this requires a lawyer for a routine deal, though a creator doing serious brand work should have one look at a standard set of terms once and reuse them. It requires reading the document, understanding that the money is in the lines nobody reads, and being willing to spend an awkward ten minutes on WhatsApp to protect a year.