Performance Tiers for Flat-Rate Campaigns

UGC (ugc.africa) is the human ad network connecting brands to real people who post real content on their own social accounts - WhatsApp Status, Snapchat Spotlight, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and more - and get paid for verified reach. Some of the campaign types on UGC pay creators a flat rate per approved post rather than a rate per view: WhatsApp Status and Snapchat Spotlight are the two most common examples today, since view counts on those formats can only be confirmed after the fact, via a screenshot, rather than tracked automatically.

Flat-rate campaigns just got a new option: performance tiers. An advertiser can now attach a minimum-view threshold to a flat-rate campaign, so payout scales with how many people actually saw the post - instead of paying the same fixed amount whether a post reached a handful of people or a few thousand.

This is an opt-in feature, not a platform-wide change. Advertisers choose whether to use it per campaign, and creators see exactly what's expected before they ever reserve a slot.

Why This Exists

Flat-rate payout is a simple, predictable model: post the content, get approved, get paid a fixed amount. That simplicity is exactly why formats like WhatsApp Status work well for it - there's no public view counter to pull data from, so a flat per-post rate has always been the practical default.

But "simple" and "performance-aware" aren't the same thing. Two posts can both get approved and both earn the same flat payout, even if one was seen by a fraction of the audience the other reached. For advertisers running campaigns at scale, that gap matters - a flat rate with no performance floor means budget isn't guaranteed to buy actual reach, just approved posts.

Performance tiers close that gap without changing what makes flat-rate campaigns easy to run: creators still just post and submit a screenshot for review, and advertisers still set one flat rate for the whole campaign. The only addition is a transparent scale that ties payout to how many views a post actually delivered.

How It Works

When an advertiser sets up a flat-rate campaign, they can optionally define performance tiers: a minimum view count required for the full payout, and reduced (or zero) payout for posts that fall short of that number. A campaign can have a single threshold ("hit this many views, or the post doesn't qualify") or several graduated tiers, so a post that clears part of the target still earns a reduced amount rather than nothing at all.

Creators see the tiers directly on the campaign's detail page before reserving a slot - not buried in fine print, and not revealed only after a post is already submitted for review. That means a creator can look at a flat-rate campaign, see what it takes to earn full payout, and decide whether it's worth posting to before they've done any work.

Campaigns that don't use tiers work exactly as they always have: one flat rate, paid on approval, regardless of view count. Nothing changes for those campaigns or for creators who only post to them.

What This Means for Creators

• You know the bar before you jump. Any flat-rate campaign using tiers shows the view thresholds on its campaign page, right alongside the payout amount. There's no guessing and no surprise at review time.
• Partial performance can still pay. Where a campaign uses multiple tiers rather than a single all-or-nothing threshold, posting a good campaign that falls just short of the top tier can still earn a reduced payout - not zero.
• It's campaign-by-campaign. Tiers are a property of individual campaigns, not a platform rule. Plenty of flat-rate campaigns will still pay one fixed amount for any approved post, the same way they always have. Check each campaign's detail page to see which kind it is.
• The verification process hasn't changed. You still post, submit your proof (a screenshot, for surfaces like WhatsApp Status and Snapchat Spotlight), and a reviewer approves it. Tiers only affect the payout math once a post is approved - they don't add extra steps to reserving or submitting a slot.

What This Means for Advertisers

• Budget that tracks reach. Instead of committing to the same payout for every approved slot regardless of performance, you can now set a minimum bar for full payout - and pay proportionally less for posts that don't clear it.
• No math required per campaign. Tiers are configured as thresholds you set once when creating the campaign; you don't need to recalculate anything if you adjust your flat rate later - the tier structure scales with whatever rate you choose.
• Still simple to run. This isn't a new campaign type or a new review workflow - it's an option inside the flat-rate campaign you already know how to launch. If you don't need performance gating, you can ignore this entirely and your campaign behaves exactly as it did before.
• Transparent to creators by design. Because tiers are visible on the campaign page before creators reserve a slot, you're not introducing a rule creators discover after the fact - they're opting into a campaign whose terms they can already see.

Where This Applies

Today, this is most relevant to screenshot-verified formats - WhatsApp Status, Snapchat Spotlight, and similar surfaces where view counts are confirmed manually rather than tracked automatically, which is why these formats have historically used flat-rate payout in the first place. The feature isn't limited to those two formats specifically - it's available to any flat-rate campaign on the platform.

If your campaigns run on cost-per-view (CPM) payout instead of flat rate, this change doesn't apply to you - CPM campaigns already pay based on verified views by design.

Getting Started

• Advertisers: the next time you launch a flat-rate campaign, you'll see the option to add performance tiers during setup. It's optional - skip it for a simple flat rate, or configure it if you want payout to scale with reach.
• Creators: look for the tier breakdown on any flat-rate campaign's detail page before you reserve a slot. Campaigns without a tier table pay their flat rate the same way they always have.

Questions about how a specific campaign's tiers work? Reach out through the platform, or head to ugc.africa to see current campaigns.