Transcription
You ever wondered, "Am I charging too little or way too much for my sponsorships?" You're not alone. Most creators have no clue what their content is actually worth. They're scared to charge too much and scare brands away, or they're scared to charge too little and leave money on the table. The good news is you're not alone. And in this video, I'm going to be giving a complete deep dive into how to price your videos for sponsorships.
For a little background, my name is Brandon Pomearati. I'm the founder of Adhesive Media. We're a sponsorship representation agency and we work with over 150 YouTube creators. In the last 3 years, we've closed over $18 million in sponsorships with over a 100 different brands. So, when I give advice here, I know what I'm talking about.
The first thing I want to get into is why do most creators price their sponsorships wrong? And it boils down to a few reasons. Number one is you're guessing your pricing. You're basing your pricing based on your friend's channel who might have a totally different audience, a totally different genre, a totally different viewership than you. Number two, you may have missing context. You may not know what the brand actually cares about. And the truth is they care about sales. They don't really care about your production cost. They don't care how about how much effort you put into the sponsorship. And that is the brutal truth of it. And the third reason that you are probably pricing your sponsorship wrong is your mindset. For 90% of YouTube creators where YouTube is their main source of income, your motivation should be to lock in the right sponsors for long-term deals. Yes, the deal might be at a slightly lower cost, but as a YouTuber, we'd recommend having longer-term deals so you could actually plan out your revenue and know that you have consistent money coming in every month. It's also way better for your audience to have a few sponsors that you work with consistently than a different sponsor every video.
So, when it comes to the foundation of sponsorship pricing, the first term that you'll want to understand is a CPM. CPM means cost per,000 views, and it's generally based on either average views or guaranteed views. Guaranteed views. I'll get into what that is later, but let's say your channel averages a 100,000 views per video and you charge a $40 CPM. Your sponsorship price would be $4,000. Let's say you guarantee 80,000 views and you have a $50 CPM. Then your sponsorship price would also be $4,000.
Now, what we specialize in selling are 60-second midroll integrations. the ones that you've seen all over YouTube with companies like AG1, BetterHelp, Factor, DraftKings, and more. And what we've seen is most integrations fall between a $20 and $60 CPM for these type of deals. What I'm going to get into next is the 10 factors that affect your pricing that will either get you closer to $60 CPM or closer to a $20 CPM. Like I mentioned, this pricing model is for 60-second midroll integrations with general products. At the end of the video, I'm also going to get through how to price for dedicated videos, longer sponsorships, usage rights, and more. But for now, we're going to start with the standard most popular ad format, which is a one minute midroll integration.
Number one is your US audience percentage. So, if you're a US-based creator and you are planning to do a sponsorship with a company that sells to people in the United States, then your US percentage is one of the biggest factors that get into your pricing. The difference between a 40% US audience and an 80% US audience means two times as many people will be eligible buyers for that sponsor's product. So, if you have a higher US audience percentage, ideally above 70%, you're going to be closer to the $60 CPM.
The next thing is audience age. For most products that are sponsoring YouTube channels, maybe other than mobile games, they are targeting a more mature audience because they'll have more buying power. They'll have more spending power. A YouTube channel where it's all 10 to 15 year olds watching will not have their own credit cards and will not have their own spending power. Whereas a channel where everyone is 25 plus or 35 plus will generally have more disposable income to spend on the sponsor's product, thus driving your CPM up.
The number three thing that affects your pricing is your engagement rate. What we generally look for are channels with a 7% engagement rate, which means likes plus comments divided by views is 7%. And more specifically, what I'm looking at is a 7% comment rate. So that means for every,000 views you get, you want to get seven comments. For every 100,000 views you get, you want to have 700 comments. What that means is your audience is engaging with your content. They're making comments and they have more trust in you as the host of the content to eventually buy whatever product you are promoting.
The number four thing that would drive your CPM up. And this could be enough to get you all the way to a 60 CPM, even if you're missing a lot of the other factors is your sponsorship renewal rate. And basically what this is, this is the rate by which sponsors come back to sponsor you again. If every sponsor you work with comes back with an annual deal to work with you, you're going to be out of sponsorship spots and thus you're going to have less quantity of available spots and you can sell them at a higher rate. So let's say you do four videos a month. You do your first sponsorship, that one comes back and books once a month. You do your second one, that one comes back, books once a month. And your third one comes back and books once a month. You only have one spot left. And what you could tell this last spot is, hey, everyone I've worked with has renewed. So we're driving our price up. We've worked with channels where that's happened and we've seen channels be able to increase their price. We had one channel that started at $7,500 a spot and now we're selling spots at $22,000 per sponsorship because there is literally no more space available and so many brands want to sponsor them. That's only possible because the channel gets a renewal deal on every single brand that they work with.
The fifth factor that affects your pricing will be your viewership consistency. Brands want to see that you have an audience, a returning audience. What that means to them is you have a fan base or an audience base that keeps coming back for more and they love your content. When they love your content and they have an affinity to you as a host, they are more likely to purchase whatever product you are sponsored by. The other benefit of having a good consistent viewership is brands will have more certainty than when they spend a certain amount of money with you, they know how many views they're going to get out of that. So, it gives them more certainty and it feels like they're taking a less risky bet by paying you more for that sponsorship. A very high viewership consistency is a 20% variation in views. So, let's say your average views are 100,000 per video. You don't want to have any views dipping below 80,000 or going above 120,000. That is a consistent viewership. So, 20% up or down means your viewership is very consistent.
The next thing that affects your ad pricing is ad placement. Basically, what this means is where is the ad placed in the video? Generally, we recommend placing the ad in the first 30% of the video. If you put it at the end of the video after there's already the viewership drop off and the retention drop off, then sponsors will be more likely to lowball you on their offer because there's going to be less people seeing the ad at the end of the video.
The seventh thing here is ad frequency. Let's say you are posting three videos a week, which is 12 per month, and you have a sponsorship in every single video. Chances are your pricing may actually decrease versus if you have less spots available. On the other end, let's say you have those 12 spots, but they're all recurring brands and maybe 11 of them are filled, then you could actually sell that last spot at a high rate because like I mentioned earlier, you already have demand filling it. So, with this whole thing, there's a supply and demand balance as well where if you have less supply available, but there's a lot of brands that want to sponsor you, you can increase your rates and get closer to that 60 CPM or higher rate.
The eighth factor that'll affect your pricing is if your face is on screen. This is a universal thing that I've seen with channels. If you are an animated or cartoon or no face channel, generally the audience will have less of a relationship to the actual host of the channel and thus your sponsorship pricing will be way way lower. Especially if you're talking about a physical product, the brand will want you to use it on screen. And if you're not showing that on screen, your sponsorship pricing will be lower.
The ninth thing that affects your pricing is how creative your ad read is and does it actually tie into the topic of the video. So if you're a biohacking creator and you're going to get sponsored by a sauna company and you're doing a video where you're talking about saunas and you're talking about the benefits of saunas, that one minute integration will definitely be on the higher end of CPMs, probably way higher than a 60 CPM because biohacking creators can charge so much. So you really want to think about how creative your ad reads.
And the last thing here is the brand and channel alignment. And so this is how much does the product align with your channel and how much does it align with you? Can you give a personal endorsement of the product? Do you use the product? Do a lot of your audience do could they use the product? Is there alignment between that product and the genre of your channel? So that's the last thing you want to think about. And this arguably could have one of the biggest impacts on your pricing.
Overall, the better you score on these, you're going to be closer to a 60 CPM or even higher. And if you're missing a lot of these, you're going to be closer to a $20 CPM and lower. And as a reminder, these are for one minute midroll ad placements. If you're doing dedicated videos, this whole CPM model isn't as applicable, and we'll talk about that later in the video.
So, I know this is a lot of information, and it might be tough for you still to figure out that price even with all these factors. So, what I'm going to be doing is creating a custom GPT. And what that will do is it'll ask you a set of questions about your channel. You'll answer it and it'll spit out proposed pricing for Midroll sponsorships. If you're interested in that, I'm still working on it at the time of this video. So, please comment below and probably by the time this video is done being edited, I'll have that ready and I could reply to your comment with the link to that custom GPT.
So, now that you have the CPM that you want to charge for sponsorships, it's time to put together your price for a midroll sponsorship integration. Your price will be a CPM times your average views or times your guaranteed views. So, let's say you landed at a $40 CPM. Your average views are 100,000 per video. You would charge $4,000. When it comes to guaranteed views, let's get into that in the next section so you can determine if you want to offer a view guarantee and if that's something you are comfortable offering.
So, now you might be wondering, what is a view guarantee and should I offer one? Let me first explain what a view guarantee is, how it works, and then I'll help you determine if you need to offer that for your channel. So, first, what is a view guarantee? A view guarantee is when you offer to an advertiser a guaranteed amount of views for a certain sponsorship within a certain time frame. So, let's say your channel averages 100,000 views a video. You might tell that, "I'm going to guarantee 100,000 views within the first 30 days. And if it doesn't hit 100,000 views, I will place your ad in another upcoming video." That's one option is you could place in an upcoming video. Another option is you can say, "Hey, if it doesn't hit the 100,000 views, we will prorate the invoice by the percentage below the 100,000 views." So, let's say you hit 70,000 views. Out of 100,000 views, you would charge the advertiser 70% of the sponsorship cost. You would basically deduct 30% from the invoice.
And so view guarantees are great for channels with inconsistent viewership. If your views go from 20,000 to 100,000 to 500,000 to 40,000 per video and it's all over the place, a view guarantee is great because generally when sponsors are looking at average pricing, they're basing it off the minimum safe threshold. So if you're going between 20,000 and 100,000 views per video, they're going to price your channel at like 20 or 30,000 average views. But if you know a certain video is going to pop off, you'll want to guarantee views. So, the advertiser has some certainty and you can charge a CPM based on a higher amount of views. Remember, if you have a $40 CPM and they're basing it on 30,000 average views, that's $1,200. If you have a 40 CPM and they're basing it off 100,000 average views, that's $4,000. So, you want to be very intentional. If you have an inconsistent channel, you'll probably want to offer a view guarantee. Most creators will prefer to have the prorated option on their view guarantee where they can actually deduct the percentage of the invoice rather than posting another ad. So, make sure to clarify that with the advertiser if that's something that you want to offer.
The last thing I'll mention on the view guarantee side of things is if you have a very consistent viewership, like I mentioned earlier, let's say you average 100,000 views a video and your videos are all between 80 and 120K, you probably won't need a view guarantee because your audience is already consistent.
Quick pause. If you want a full CPM breakdown per genre, make sure to check out sponsorship toolbox.com. It's a full resource, free resource we have. We don't even ask for your email. And we have a CPM breakdowns per genre. And also, like I mentioned, if you want that custom GPT where you can input details about your channel and it spits out your sponsorship pricing, drop that in the comments and I will send you the link to that.
For the next part of this video, I'm going to be going through four sample channels. Probably you've heard of a few of them. And we're going to calculate their sponsorship pricing live and what I think that they charge per each sponsorship. So, let's move it over to this screen and I'm going to share my screen and we're going to get through it.
So, the first channel that we're going to get into, I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's Mr. Beast. Probably you haven't. He's I know he's a pretty unknown channel and we're going to be going through his channel. I'm going to be giving some sample numbers since I don't obviously I don't know the demographics behind it and we're going to talk about what we think his sponsorship pricing would be. Okay. So channel is obviously massive. We're going to go through each of these and give a little bit estimate. So US audience percentage generally what I'm seeing for entertainment channels like this especially with him he has such a large international reach is his US audience is probably between 30 and 40%. We'll give him the benefit of the doubt and put it at 40%. Audience age. I can't pinpoint the number here, but my guess is it's low. Most people that are watching Mr. Beast are probably a little bit on the younger end. Uh, in terms of engagement rate, let's look at these right here. So, we've got 3 million likes and 42,000 comments. It goes out to 3.5 out of this. It's a little bit under 3% engagement rate. Another one here. We're going to look at 3 million out of 100 million. About 3% again, we're going to go here. Here's about 5 million plus this 5.5 million out of 250,000. It's about two and a half%. So his engagement rate is on the lower end. Sponsorship renewal rate. I can't really calculate this right now. I don't know how many sponsors are coming back to Mr. Beast. He's a little bit of unique example where it's an massive brand awareness push and it is the biggest YouTuber on YouTube. So he gets some sort of benefit about that. Viewership consistency. As big as the channel is, it is actually quite consistent for how big it is. Um, as in an advertiser pretty much knows they're going to get about 120 million views on their sponsorship. So this one I would say is good. Ad placement, he's placing them pretty well. Ad frequencies, you know, he's doing about two videos a month, so it's pretty good here. Host on screen, yes, he's on screen. Creative ads, yes, he keeps them as attaining. And then brand and channel alignment, generally if you're sponsoring Mr. Beast, so you're going to have a good alignment. So based on this, what I would say if you're looking at $120 million views a video in terms of the CPM range between a $20 and $60, just because the audience is lower and the US audience is pretty low, I'm guessing he's somewhere around a 25ish CPM. And so total pricing here would be about $3 million or a 60-second sponsorship on Mr. Beast. Yes, it's crazy. Mr. Beast is huge. So Mr. Beast, great job. Probably you're charging between $2 and $4 million a sponsorship. That's my guess.
So, let's get into the next channel. So, the next channel here is Ali Abdal. I've actually watched a few of his videos when I was thinking about starting this YouTube channel. So, Ali, shout out to you. So, for his videos, let's get into it. So, US audience, my guess is he actually has a big UK audience as well, but it is like solid business content. I think productivity in general, people want to learn how to grow their online brand is a pretty, I guess, American thing. So, my guess is he's also probably about 50%. It's still a little bit low, but not bad. Audience age, I would say, is more mixed. It's definitely older than Beast. Uh, and he probably has a ton of people between 20 and 30. So, that's great. Engage rate, let's look at some of these. So, if we look at 2,00 here in terms of how many comments he's getting, 200 here, it's about 5% on this. There are tools that will give you this, but I'm just eyeballing this just for the quickness of it. About 8,000 this 8.5K out of here, another 4%. Another one here, 7,000 plus this is about 7.6 about 4% as well. So, still his engagement rate is a little bit on the lower end. So, that's good. Sponsorship renewal rate, I don't have the data in front of me, but I do know that he has a lot of recurring sponsors. Um, and his audience are buying, so that's great. Viewership consistency is a little, you know, I think the last two are a little bit of flops, but if you look at it generally, he's getting about 150,000, but it is a little bit inconsistent. So, I would say slightly inconsistent. Um, ad placement, I know he's placing them, you know, standard ad placements. Ad frequency, I think it's pretty standard here on his channel as well. Host on screen, this is a yes. If you've seen his ads, his ads are great integrations. And then generally, he's only working with brands that are a fit, whether it's education, productivity, money, personal brand related. So, generally the brand and channel alignment on his channel is really good. The other thing I will mention for a creator like this is Ali Abdal is making millions of dollars from his course sales. And so he's probably a lot pickier with the sponsors he takes because he doesn't necessarily need the money from the sponsors a lot of the time. My guess is he's charging closer to the $50 or even higher, closer to maybe even an $80 CPM per sponsorships. And so probably what he's seeing with views like this at around 150k views a video is a $10,000 or more per sponsorship placement here. I wouldn't even be surprised if he's charging $20,000 of sponsorship, which would be an even higher CPM just given the high high demand to work with someone like him. Um, so that is Ali Abdal.
The next one we're going to get into is an automotive channel called Big Time. Automotive channels generally have a pretty good US audience. It's probably between 60ish%. It's a little bit larger channel. Might drive down the US audience, but I would say US audience here is definitely higher at around 60%. Audience age here is probably older than the past two that we saw. So, probably looking at something like a 30 plus audience, which is pretty good. In terms of engagement rates, we're looking at 50,000 likes. 2,000 comments is about 53 out of 750. It's about 7% which is pretty good. Another one 50 plus another,000. It's another 6% there. This video we're looking here about 58 total engagements out of this is about 6%. Engagement rate is pretty good at around 6%. In terms of sponsorship renewal rate, usually I look at it by just looking at sponsor here and seeing who's coming back. I also have another tool that I can use but can't really show on this video. Sponsor renewal rate is pretty decent on this channel. So that's good. And then viewership consistency. But looking at viewership consistency, it's actually pretty good. Uh I would say it's like medium. A advertiser probably will get they can bank on getting about 700,000 views on a video they sponsor. Um, in terms of ad placement, typical automotive channel, they're probably placing in the first five minutes of video. So, it's good here. Uh, ad frequency looks like they're doing about one video a week placing an ad in every single one. So, it's pretty standard here, I would say. Um, host is on screen. Yes. Creative ad reads. We'd have to watch it, but depending on how like, you know, are they are they working with an automotive product? If they're sponsored by Shopify, do they use Shopify? Um, and so these ones I would say is likely pretty standard on this channel. This is mo mostly for you to think about for your channel. I would probably say they are pricing their sponsorships around a uh 30 $35 CPM here. And assuming they get 700,000 views a video, we're looking at about 21 to $28,000 per sponsorship. That's my guess on what they're charging for their sponsorships.
All right. And the last channel that I'm going to be talking about is Welker Farms. And if you know me, you know I love my farming channels on YouTube because they perform so well for advertisers. So, namely, farming channels have incredibly high US audiences. I wouldn't be surprised if it's 75% for this channel, which is great. Generally, their audiences are older. Most of the audience will be above 45 plus. Engagement rate generally, I mean, they have higher farming. So, you look at 14,000 likes with another 200 comments. About 9% right there. Here, another one. 18,000 likes out of here. We're looking at another comment engagement is a little bit low. So I would say their engagement rate is still good. They're getting a lot of likes. Say good work on the comment engagement. Sponsorship renewal rate. Um I don't have it here, but I do know they are renewed by a handful of brands. So I'll put this on good. Viewership consistency. Viewership consistency here is pretty good. Basically everything is between 180 and about 250k views about a 30% um variation. So it's not too bad. So I would say this is pretty good. Ad placement. We can find their sponsorships. Generally, they're probably placing about the first third of the video, which is good. Ad frequency here is good. Host on screen is a yes. Creative ads, depending on what product they're in, I would probably say this is medium here. Generally, farming, their ads are like somewhat creative. They just say, "Hey, I use this product." That's it. And then brand and channel alignment. It's generally harder to find farming uh brands that will sponsor them. So, it's just general products that they use. So, I'll call this okay. With all that said, my guess is they're charging about a 40 CPM for here. Given the US audience, audience age, that's what's pushing it the most here. And the viewership consistency. And so most likely what I'll say here is based on that 220k average views, they're probably charging around $8.8,000 per sponsorship. That is my guess for this channel. They probably crush for their advertisers. So hopefully that's helpful going through some example channels so you can get an idea of how I look at pricing.
The next thing I want to talk about are what are some pricing extras and add-ons that you could do that would actually increase your pricing or that the brand might be asking for that you will counter with a higher price. So number one is longer ads. So what I'm generally seeing, like I spoke about, we're talking about 60-second ads. Generally, if we're talking about a 90-second ad, you can see about a 20 to 30% increase in price. If we're looking at 2 to 3 minutes, you might increase your price by 40 to 60%. And if we're talking about a dedicated video, generally we're charging anywhere from two to three times the normal rate because it's a whole video talking about their product. Maybe for semi-dedicated, we're charging about 50% more.
The next thing that will increase pricing is or an actual add-on fee at the end is usage rights. So, if you want to give the brand the right to basically use your creative that you made in the ad towards their paid advertising, you can generally charge about 20 to 30% of the sponsorship cost for 30 days of access to the usage rights. Obviously, depends on where they're going to be using your name and like list. If they're putting on a billboard, you might want to charge more. If they're putting it in TV advertising, you might want to charge more. So, just make sure to clarify with them what they are asking for in the usage, where they're going to be using it, and then you can charge based on that.
The next thing is exclusivity. So, generally most brands will ask for one or two months of exclusivity at your standard price, and that's fine. But if they're asking for a six-month lockout where you can't work with any other competing brands after just doing one ad placement, you'll definitely want to give push back on that or try to charge more. Generally, I'm only seeing six month exclusivity if a brand is locking you in on an annual contract. So, make sure to check that out on the contract with the brand. By the way, I'm going to be making a contract video next, so make sure to keep an eye out and subscribe to see that.
If you already have a consistent viewership and they're asking for a view guarantee, you can also probably charge a 10 or 20% premium on your normal pricing just because there's some risk that if it underperforms, um, you're going to either have to refund them a certain amount or post another ad for them. And the last thing, which will actually decrease your pricing a little bit, is if they offer like, hey, I want to sponsor three or six videos. Uh, generally it's okay to offer like a 20 10 or 20% discount if that's what they're asking for. Um, so that's just another thing to keep in mind when it comes to your pricing.
The next thing I want to help you out with is when you're actually pitching your channel to a brand and you say your price and they come back and they're like, "What? That's so crazy." Obviously, you want to pitch a fair price. And if you feel like it's a fair price based on the factors that I mentioned and other brands are seeing good return, you'll generally just want to counter with the facts. Hey, our US audience is really good. We have other sponsors that are getting renewed and this is why we are charging this price. On the other end, if you are charging a super high price and every every advertiser is coming back and say, "Hey, we got zero sales. Hey, this isn't doing well. Hey, this only hit 10% of our target." You may want to actually consider lowering your price so you can lock in some advertisers for longer-term deals if that's your goal. And in my opinion, for a YouTuber that's full-time and sponsorships is their income, I think locking in long-term deals should be the goal.
The next thing I want to go over, and it's a common question I get, is, "Hey, Brandon, when should I increase pricing?" And generally, you should increase pricing based on any of these factors. Number one is your viewership goes up. It's kind of the most obvious reason to increase pricing. Number two is you've changed your content and now you're getting higher engagement rates or a higher US percentage and the or higher comment rates and the audience is just generally higher value, then you can increase your pricing. And number three, which is the most common way, is you have a queue or you have a wait list of brands that want to sponsor you. Like I mentioned earlier, if the supply is low and the demand is high, you're getting a lot of renewal rates and there's no more spots available. That's when you can generally increase your pricing from your normal. Like the example I gave, we had a creator that was charging 7,500 to start. They had a bunch of renewal rates and now they're locking in sponsorships at 22,000.
So hopefully this is helpful. If you want more information about pricing, number one, make sure to check out sponsorship toolbox.com where I have a CPM breakdown per genre there. Like I mentioned, you don't need to even input your email. It's a free resource that I published online. Number two is you want to either bust out a piece of paper or comment down below and I'll send you the custom GPT and go through the factors that I mentioned and figure out what your pricing is. Even feel free to comment. You can send me a link to your channel and some details about your demographic and some of the information that I mentioned and I'll reply back to comment with what I think your pricing should be for a sponsorship. And number three is once you figure out that pricing, make sure to update your media kits, update your email templates, and uh basically be ready to pitch yourself at that new pricing.
So now that you know how to price your channel, the next step is actually landing your first deal. And that is a whole different game. If you want to learn how to pitch your channel, how to email brands, and how to set up yourself for sponsorship success, check out my video, the ultimate beginner's guide to sponsorships, linked down below. And like I mentioned from my first video, I'm not selling any courses. I'm not selling anything on this channel. Anything I will be publishing will be free on this YouTube channel and free on sponsorship toolbox.com. So, the least that you could do to help would be to subscribe to this channel. It would mean the world to me. We're trying to hit a thousand subscribers by the end of the quarter on September 30th, 2025. So, if you could subscribe, that would be awesome. Other than that, thanks so much for watching another video on the channel and we will be back next.