Creator marketplace glossary

Name: SwayQ ApS
Address: Sundkaj 11, Copenhagen, 2150, DK
Telephone: +45 22 14 79 32

Plain definitions for the terms used in creator collaborations on SwayQ, from held release to audience tiers. Where an industry term is used loosely elsewhere, this page states how SwayQ uses it and why.

Platform and collaboration

Creator: A person who produces original content for an audience on social platforms and works with brands under their own name. SwayQ says creator rather than influencer because the work is production, not only promotion.
Creator marketplace: A platform where brands publish campaign briefs and creators apply to them, instead of brands sourcing creators through cold outreach, spreadsheets, or an agency roster. The brief, the application, the agreement, the deliverables, and the payment all live in one structured record. SwayQ is a creator marketplace built for Nordic brands and creators.
Campaign brief: The structured description a brand publishes when it wants to work with creators: the goal, the deliverables, the markets, the timeline, and the budget range. Applications, the agreement, the deliverables, and the payment all attach to the brief instead of scattering across inboxes.
Deliverable: One piece of content a creator has agreed to produce, such as a single reel, a set of stories, or a photo pack. Each deliverable has its own deadline, agreed rate, and review, so a collaboration with five pieces settles as five decisions rather than one lump at the end.
Campaign deposit: A payment a brand makes into a campaign to fund the collaborations that come out of it. Stripe holds the deposit under its own license, never SwayQ, and the individual creator agreements in the campaign are paid from it.

Payments and release

Held release: The mechanism that holds campaign funds between payment and payout: the brand's money goes to Stripe, which holds it under its own e-money license, and SwayQ instructs the transfer when the deliverable's review window closes. Held release is deliberately not escrow. An escrow account is a regulated arrangement in which a third party takes custody of the funds, and SwayQ never takes custody of anyone's money, so escrow is both the wrong description and a claim SwayQ cannot make.
Milestone release: The release of a defined portion of a campaign's funds when a specific step completes, usually a submitted deliverable clearing its review window. A collaboration can carry several milestones, each attached to its own deliverable, so a creator is paid as the work lands rather than only at the very end.
Auto-release window: The fixed review period that starts when a creator submits a deliverable: on SwayQ, 7 calendar days, adjusted so it never ends on a weekend. If the brand raises no issue before the window closes, the milestone releases on schedule, so both sides know the payout date from the moment the work is submitted.
Platform fee: The service fee SwayQ charges for facilitating a collaboration. It is paid by the brand and kept separate from the creator's rate: the rate is the creator's own supply to the brand, and SwayQ invoices only its own fee.
Rate card: A creator's stated pricing per deliverable type, for example one rate for a reel and another for a set of stories. A rate card lets a negotiation start from a published number instead of a guess.

Ranking, tiers, and trust signals

Q-Score: A creator's ranking position within their category on SwayQ. It is an ordinal position rather than a rating out of five, so a lower number is a stronger position and Q-Score 12 sits ahead of Q-Score 340. It moves with verified platform data and the record of completed collaborations. SwayQ publishes what the ranking considers and never publishes the formula, the weights, or the thresholds, because a published formula is a formula to game.
Match Score: A per-campaign relevance signal describing how well one creator fits one brief, distinct from the Q-Score, which is category-wide. A creator can rank strongly in their category and still be a weak match for a particular campaign. As with the Q-Score, what it considers is describable and the mechanics are not published.
Audience tier: A band describing a creator's total audience size across every connected platform: nano under 5,000, micro from 5,000 to 24,999, mid from 25,000 to 99,999, macro from 100,000 to 499,999, and mega at 500,000 and above. SwayQ's bands are calibrated for the Nordic market, where a creator at 100,000 followers is already a leading domestic voice.
Compound reach: The sum of a creator's follower counts across all of their connected platforms, and the number that places them in an audience tier. It is a single profile-level figure rather than a per-platform one, because a creator with 8,000 followers on each of three platforms is not a nano creator in practice.
Nano-influencer: A creator with fewer than roughly 5,000 followers. Nano creators reach small and specific communities, and in a market the size of Denmark a nano creator with a genuinely local audience can outperform a much larger national account on a regional campaign. SwayQ calls this band nano in its audience tiers.
Micro-influencer: A creator with roughly 5,000 to 25,000 followers. Engagement in this band is typically higher than on large accounts, which is why brands often run several small collaborations rather than one large one. SwayQ calls this band micro in its audience tiers, and uses creator rather than influencer in its own product language.
Mid-tier influencer: A creator with roughly 25,000 to 100,000 followers. Mid-tier creators have grown beyond a single niche while keeping a close relationship with their audience, and in the Nordics many of the strongest category voices sit in this band. SwayQ calls this band mid in its audience tiers.
Macro-influencer: A creator with roughly 100,000 to 500,000 followers. In a market the size of Denmark, a macro creator is already known well beyond their own niche, and campaigns at this level buy broad national visibility rather than one specific community. SwayQ calls this band macro in its audience tiers.
Mega-influencer: A creator with more than 500,000 followers. In the Nordic market this is the star tier: television personalities, musicians, and the country's biggest creators, whose reach works more like national media than a niche channel. SwayQ calls this band mega in its audience tiers.

Content types and rights

UGC (user-generated content): Content a creator produces for a brand to use in the brand's own channels, such as paid ads, a product page, or an email, rather than publishing it to the creator's own audience. What the brand buys is the content and the licence to use it, not the creator's reach. UGC is usually priced as production plus usage rights.
Influencer content: Content a creator publishes to their own audience under their own name, where what the brand buys is the reach and the trust the creator has with that audience. The distinction from UGC is commercial, not stylistic: UGC is priced as production plus a licence, influencer content is priced as distribution. A single collaboration can include both.
Usage rights: The permission a brand buys to use a creator's content, defined by where it may run, for how long, and in which markets. Rights are agreed per deliverable and are time-bounded, and extending them is a new agreement with its own rate, never a quiet edit of the original one.
Whitelisting: An arrangement in which a brand runs paid advertising through a creator's own account, so the ad appears under the creator's name rather than the brand's. It is a specific usage right, agreed and priced separately from an organic post, and normally time-bounded like any other right.