Pay per view turns reach into the unit of payment. The brand names a rate per 1,000 views, the creator posts on their own account, and after an agreed number of days the views are read and the creator is paid. No fee for filming, no share of sales: the audience that showed up is what gets paid for. Marketers call the rate a CPM because it is a cost per thousand, though here the thousand is views of an organic post, not ad impressions.
The model has spread through clipping platforms, where brands post a rate and creators compete for it. Whop describes its Content Rewards that way: the brand sets the rate per 1,000 views, and it reports an average of $1 per 1,000 for clippers (Whop, 3 March 2025). Brand-commissioned UGC usually pays more per thousand, because the creator films original footage rather than cutting someone else’s.
Example. A brand offers $5 per 1,000 views, read on day 14, capped at $600. One creator’s post reaches 130,000 views: $650 uncapped, $600 paid. Another reaches 9,000: $45. Example numbers, not a benchmark.
When brands use it. The pain this answers: “We paid an influencer a flat fee for one post and got nothing.” Pay per view pays for the post that was seen and almost nothing for the post that was not. The terms that matter are the rate, the counting day, what counts as a view, the cap, and whether the brand’s own paid boosts count. Sideshift describes its own structure as “Base rate. View bonuses. And an uncapped $2 CPM.” (Nick Lawton, LinkedIn, 20 Jul 2026), and one brand using it says “I don’t pay for videos with less than 250 views” (X, 15 Oct 2026): view minimums are part of the terms.
The creator’s view. Views vary from post to post, so this is upside, not salary, and no brand should promise what a post will earn. Ask how views are read (analytics access, a screenshot, a tool) and when.
On HourlyUGC. CPM, pay per 1,000 views of the creator’s organic post, can be added on top of any base: hourly, per video or none. Next step: start a campaign on HourlyUGC.