TikTok Branded Video with Spark Ads Rights, Bought on Watch Time

TikTok counts a view the instant the video autoplays, which makes view count useless as a buy criterion. We price against average watch time and the share of viewers still present at six seconds, both read from the creator's own analytics export rather than a third-party estimate. A creator holding 45 percent of viewers at six seconds across their last thirty videos is worth more to a developer tools brand than one with four times the followers holding 12 percent. Who this is for: Developer tools with something demonstrable on screen, a terminal or a diff or a build going green, and kids-and-family brands selling to parents. Both work here for the same reason: the format rewards showing the thing rather than describing it. Where the product cannot be shown, we decline the brief. The first six seconds: We do not write the video. We write the constraint: what has to be in frame at second zero, the claim we will defend, the phrasings that create a regulatory problem, and the disclosure. The creator writes the hook, because the hook is the part of the craft they are being paid for. Where we intervene is structure. A demonstration that arrives at second nineteen has already lost the audience it needed. Sound: Branded content on TikTok has to sit on the Commercial Music Library or a track you have cleared yourself. We will not put a sponsored video against a trending commercial release because it is performing, and we will not accept a creator's assurance that everybody does it. That decision has cost campaigns reach and we make it anyway. Spark Ads and rights: Where the organic video earns its place, we take Spark Ads authorisation from the creator, 60 days as standard and 365 where the deal justifies it, and run paid distribution from the creator's own handle rather than a rebuilt brand-owned copy. The comments, the profile and the follow button all stay live, which is the entire reason it works. Media spend is quoted separately from the creator fee and runs on your ad account, so the pixel data and the account history stay yours. What the fee covers: Creator identification and direct negotiation, one brief per creator, product shipping and account provisioning, disclosure review in each market you sell into, Spark authorisation collection, and the post-flight readout. It does not cover media spend, paid usage beyond the negotiated window, or reshoots requested for tone. Measurement: TikTok Pixel or Events API on the landing route, a destination URL unique to each creator, and post-purchase source attribution from your own store or CRM. We report six-second retention, average watch time, completion rate, comment sentiment sampled by hand, and conversions. We do not report engagement rate, which averages four dissimilar actions into a number that moves for reasons nobody can act on. What we refuse: Deleting the video after the flight; if it was honest on day one it stays up. Turning off duet and stitch, which reads as a brand that expects to be argued with. Buying against follower count or a rate card. Any deliverable whose intended viewer is under thirteen. Comment sections scrubbed of criticism. Creators who have run a competing product in the same category within 60 days. Not for you: Anyone who wants script approval line by line. Anyone whose product needs three minutes of explanation before it makes sense, which is a podcast or a Twitch segment, and we will say so rather than sell you this. Brands mid-crisis looking for volume to bury it.