“Every commission program is 10 % of GMV. We’re an app. There is no cart.”
UGC for apps has no order value to share, so “15 % of GMV” means nothing to an app founder. Two models fit instead. A share of the Meta ad spend behind the creator’s video, which needs no cart at all; or a fixed dollar amount per paid conversion, a subscription or an in-app purchase, counted by Meta or by a pixel on your web checkout. The program app founders quote most, Wispr Flow’s, pays 7 % of ad spend for as long as the ad runs. The number comes from your target cost per paid user, and it is capped per video.
Why a share of GMV does not fit apps
A sales share works when every order has a value and a margin that scale together: a $45 skincare order, $17 of margin, 20 % to the creator. An app has none of those. Its “order” is a $0 install, a trial, or a subscription whose value arrives over months. Its margin is a number per user, not a percentage of a basket. And the conversion that pays you often happens inside the app store, where no store pixel sees it.
So the commission has to attach to something that does exist on day one: the ad spend you put behind the creator’s video, or one counted conversion with a fixed price on it. The glossary entry on flat per order covers the general case; this page is the app case.
Commission for app installs: the two models that work
A share of the Meta ad spend behind the video. The creator earns a percentage of what you spend running their video as an ad, for as long as it runs. No cart, no attribution dispute: the spend is in your ad account, per ad. Wispr Flow’s growth lead describes 500 to 700 UGC ads a month with creators on 7 % of ad spend, paid as long as the ad spends (Hector Serrano on X, 8 October 2026, 2,078,610 views; the same program on LinkedIn). They say; the numbers are the brand’s. Nick Lawton of Sideshift credits the same program with “610 Meta ads” behind Wispr Flow’s growth (LinkedIn, 24 August 2026); they say. An app founder in one of Trybe’s brand-facing ads explains the arithmetic the same way: 7 % of ad spend, so $10,000 of spend pays the creator $700 (Meta Ad Library). Lukas Pakter’s public advice for brands without a cart to share is a percentage of ad spend in the 5 to 10 % range (TikTok, 8 June 2026). Lumanu’s payout data puts the market at “between 1% - 7% of the amount of ad spend” that brands put through creator accounts (Lumanu, $500 million in payouts, 2024).
A fixed dollar amount per paid conversion. When the creator also posts on their own account with a link, or when you want the pay tied to users rather than media, set a flat amount on the event that pays you: a paid subscription, a first in-app purchase. Not the install. An install can be idle or fraudulent; a paid conversion cannot. The amount comes from your target cost per paid user, below.
Most app programs run both: spend share on the ads, a flat amount per paid user on the creator’s own posts.
How to set the number
Work from the number you already manage: the cost you can pay to acquire one paying user.
- Take your target cost per paid user. Say $30, against a $60 first-year value.
- Decide the creator’s slice of it. Between 10 and 25 % is a working range when the creator’s video is one input among media, landing page and product. That gives $3 to $7.50 per paid user.
- Convert to a share of spend. If your ads currently buy a paid user for $30, a 10 % share of spend is $3 per paid user. Same money, counted on the ad instead of the user.
- Cap it per video. The cap is the most you would ever scale one video to, times the share. It lets you set a 10 % share without fear.
- Pay a base if applicants are thin. The median paid brief offers $100 per video (Pitchlo, 670 briefs, December 2025 to November 2026). A $60 base under the share gets the videos made; the share gets the one that converts made well.
Example. A language-learning app spends $20,000 a month on Meta and buys a paid user for $30.
| Line | Terms | Month’s cost |
|---|---|---|
| Base | 20 creators at $60 per approved video | $1,200 |
| Share of ad spend | 8 % of the $20,000 behind creator videos, which lands on the three videos that run | $1,600 |
| Flat per paid user, creator posts | $5 per paid subscription from a creator’s link, 90 subscriptions | $450 |
| Total | 20 videos, three scaled, 90 subscriptions from organic posts | $3,250 |
At a flat $300 a video the same 20 videos cost $6,000 before any of them ran. Example numbers, not a benchmark; the shares are the brand’s to set from its own cost per paid user.
Who counts the conversion
Decide before launch, and write it on the brief.
- Meta counts. Ad spend per ad is Meta’s number, read in your account. For conversions, Meta’s attribution counts the events your app reports to it. If the paid event happens inside the app, this is the count that sees it.
- Your pixel counts. If the subscription is bought on a web page, a pixel on that page can count the order against the creator’s link or code, with a window. That is the count you can show the creator order by order.
Both can be right and different; Meta sees its last click, your pixel sees your link. Pick the one that pays the creator, and tell them. The general method is in which creator drove sales.
Whichever count, the creator discloses the partnership on any post: the FTC says to disclose “if you got anything of value to mention a product” (FTC, Disclosures 101).
How HourlyUGC does it
On HourlyUGC, an app runs the same campaign a store does, minus the cart.
- A share of the Meta ad spend behind the video, from 1 to 30 %, read per ad on the ads you launch from the campaign. No store connection needed.
- A fixed $1 to $500 per order, where the order is the paid conversion you count. Sales are counted by Meta, or by HourlyUGC through the Hourly Pixel on your web checkout, last touch within 7 days, with creator links and codes. A connected Shopify store is the other route, for brands that have one.
- A base when you want one: per video (you pay for each approved video) or hourly (you book hours and each session ends in videos). Or no base.
- Approved videos launch as Meta Partnership Ads from inside HourlyUGC, so the spend that pays the creator is the spend on the ad built from their video. See Meta partnership ads for UGC.
- CPM per 1,000 views of the creator’s organic post can sit on top, for the creators who post.
With commission, the creator gets paid when you run their video as an ad and it spends or sells. For an app, “spends” is the line that always works.
Proof
ALLSALE, Head of Growth: “The rights are ours the moment payment clears. Everything sits in one place, so the team stopped chasing invoices and files.” Kitsch runs its creator program on HourlyUGC; the workflow is in the Kitsch case study.
Next step
Start a campaign on HourlyUGC with a share of ad spend and a cap per video; add a fixed amount per paid subscription for creators who post. The niche page for apps and software is commission UGC for apps and SaaS, and the ad spend model in full is pay creators a percentage of ad spend.