Usage rights and whitelisting: what brands must agree

It happens more often than it should. A creator's reel does well, the brand's media team downloads it and runs it as an ad, and three weeks later the creator's manager sends an invoice for usage nobody agreed. The brand believes it bought the content. The creator believes the brand bought a post. Each is partly right, and the agreement settles nothing, because it said nothing either way.

Usage rights and whitelisting are different things. They are priced separately and they belong in the contract as separate terms. Here is what each one means, and what a brand should settle before anything goes live, whether it books creators directly or through an agency.

Usage rights: what you may do with the content

Usage rights set out what a brand may do with a creator's content after it is posted: where it can appear, for how long and in what form. By default, a creator's fee usually covers the post on their own account. Reusing that content on the brand's own social accounts, on its website, in paid ads, in store or in print is a separate right, and creators price it separately.

The creator normally keeps ownership. What the brand buys is a licence to use the content, and a licence is only as useful as its terms. Four points need to be written down:

• Channels: organic posts on the brand's accounts, paid social, website, email, out of home, print.
• Territory: the UAE, the GCC, a named list of countries, or worldwide.
• Length: 30, 90 or 365 days are common, counted from a stated date.
• Edits: whether the brand may cut the video down, add its own end frame, add subtitles or combine it with other footage.

"Perpetual, all media, worldwide" is a big request. It is sometimes the right one for a brand building a library of assets, but a fee that ignores it underprices the creator, and a creator who notices later tends to remember.

Whitelisting: advertising under the creator's name

Whitelisting means a brand runs paid ads through a creator's account, so the ad appears to come from the creator rather than from the brand. The brand can put money behind a post the creator has already published, or run new ads under the creator's name, reaching people well beyond the creator's followers.

On Meta this runs through partnership ads. On TikTok it runs through Spark Ads, where the creator generates an authorisation code and shares it with the brand or its agency. The industry uses several names for the same idea, including creator licensing and dark posting, which is one reason agreements tend to be vague about it.

It carries its own fee because the creator is lending their name to the brand's targeting and messaging. An ad under a creator's handle, shown to people who have never followed them, takes their reputation into places they did not choose.

The simplest way to tell them apart

Ask whose name is on the ad. If the brand runs the creator's video from its own account, that is usage rights. If it runs from the creator's account, or under the creator's identity, that is whitelisting. A brand may want one, both or neither, and each changes the price.

Usage rights let a brand use the content. Whitelisting lets it use the creator. They are two different things and deserve two different prices.

UGC deals sit slightly apart. When a creator is paid to make content that never appears on their own account, the rights are the whole product, so the price should rest on the content and the usage rather than on the creator's reach.

The whitelisting clause

Whitelisting needs a clause of its own, because the questions are different from those about usage. Agree:

• How long the brand has access, with a start date and an end date.
• The maximum spend, if there is one.
• Whether the brand may change captions, and whether it may create new ads rather than only boosting existing posts.
• Who approves any new ad before it runs. The safe answer is the creator, in writing.
• What happens to the access when the term ends. It should be removed, not left running because nobody remembered.

A well-drafted agreement keeps both clauses optional, so they can be deleted when a deal does not need them. The usage clause grants a non-exclusive licence for named channels, territory and length, with the creator keeping ownership. The whitelisting clause sets the access period, a spending cap and a rule that captions and new content need the creator's written approval.

Pricing both

There is no published price list for either, in the Gulf or anywhere else, so treat any figure you hear as one agency's habit rather than a market rate. Some price usage as a share of the base fee, scaled by length and channel; others quote a flat fee for each month of use. Either works, as long as the number appears as its own line.

Separate lines matter for two reasons. The brand can see what it is paying for and decide whether it really needs 90 days or only 30. And at renewal, the base fee and the rights can be negotiated independently instead of the whole deal being reopened. A rate calculator is a useful sense check on the base fee before a negotiation, but the rights still need writing into the agreement in full.

Watch the end dates

Most rights disputes are not about the original deal. They are about an ad still running on day 120 of a 90-day licence, because the media team never saw the agreement and nobody told them when it ended. The brand is then using content it has no right to use, and the creator is entitled to ask for payment or for the ad to come down.

Record the licence end date and the whitelisting end date against the campaign, where your marketing team and whoever buys your media can both see them, and set a reminder a week before each. When a term ends, confirm in writing that the content has been paused and the account access removed. It takes five minutes, and it is what makes a well-written clause actually hold.

If you work with creators regularly and would like the rights side to be as organised as the creative side, we are always happy to talk it over at ALXO.