A creator who films a video owns it. The U.S. Copyright Office puts it plainly: once you create an original work and fix it, you are the author and the owner, and the owner may authorize others to reproduce, distribute and display it (Copyright Office). Usage rights are that authorization. They answer four questions:
- Where: the brand’s own accounts, its site, paid ads, email.
- How: as posted, or edited, cut and captioned.
- For how long: 30 days, 90 days, a year, or without an end date.
- Under whose name: the brand’s accounts, or the creator’s handle through whitelisting.
Paid use costs more than organic use. inBeat’s pricing guide puts organic rights inside the base rate and prices paid-ad rights on top: 20 to 30 % of the base for 3 months, 25 to 40 % for 6 months, 30 to 50 % for 12 months, and 100 to 150 % for use without an end date (inBeat, updated 15 May 2026).
Example. A creator’s base rate is $200. Ninety days of paid use on Meta adds $40 to $60 by that guide. Under an ad spend share instead, the brand pays nothing for rights up front; it pays 10 % of whatever it spends on the ad, so $300 if it spends $3,000. Example numbers.
When brands use it. The pain this answers: “Chasing invoices, files and usage rights eats my team.” Rights get chased because they are set per video, after the fact, by email. Setting them once in the campaign terms, with the rate, removes the chase. Commission deals need rights most, because the point is to run the video as an ad.
The creator’s view. Rights are a separate line from the filming fee, and a longer or wider grant is worth more. In an ad spend share deal the share is the usage payment, so the use should end when the payments do.
On HourlyUGC. The campaign terms carry the pay model and the use together: hourly or per video for the filming, commission on ad spend (1 to 30 %, Meta) for the paid use, with the brand launching Meta Partnership Ads from inside HourlyUGC. Next step: start a campaign on HourlyUGC.