In most enquiries that reach a creator, the two words are used interchangeably. "We are looking for a micro-influencer to make some UGC" is a common sentence, and it describes two different services, at two different prices, under two different regimes of responsibility.

The problem is not vocabulary. It becomes concrete at invoicing time, when the brand discovers it has paid for an audience it did not want, or that it bought a file when it expected a post.

One question separates the two, and everything else follows from it: who presses publish.

One question, and a chain of consequences

If the creator publishes, on their own account, the video addresses their audience, carries their name, and commits them. If the brand publishes, the creator delivers a file, exposes nobody, and the brand alone decides when and where.

This is not a nuance of format: it is the variable that determines the audience mobilised, the way the price is built, the duty to identify the communication as commercial, and what the brand still holds once the campaign is over. Each of those four follows from the first, never the other way round.

What each one leaves in your hands

With a UGC creator

Files, and the right to do with them what the assignment provides for. No audience, no post, no comments to moderate. The asset stays available after the campaign, including for paid distribution if the contract allowed it.

It is also why one shoot can produce six variants: nobody will watch them go by on an account, they exist to be tested.

With a micro-influencer

A post, on a date, in front of followers who subscribed to that person and not to you. The video lives on their account, with their tone, their comments and their memory: it stays visible years later, and it keeps associating their name with yours.

The trade-off is real: a recommendation carried by someone the public already follows cannot be manufactured with a file.

What the audience changes, and what it does not

The audience changes reach, credibility and price. It changes neither the quality of the shoot, nor the relevance of the script, nor the ability to sell a product.

There is one case where the audience matters even when you are buying a file, and it is worth knowing: when you want to name the person in the advertising. A recommendation attributed to someone the target recognises is not worth the same as an anonymous one, and that is paid for, even without a post. It is an assignment of name and likeness on top of the video, and it is negotiated separately.

Outside that case, this is the most common and most expensive mistake: choosing a creator for their follower count when you are buying a file that will never be seen on their account. The followers are paid for and serve nothing. Conversely, ordering a plain delivery of files from someone whose entire value lies in their community is like buying a Rolls to do the shopping.

A creator with no notable audience can be excellent at UGC, and that is in fact the norm of the craft: the UGC creator with no followers takes the question head on.

The objection heard here is that someone with a following must necessarily be better in front of a camera. It mixes up two skills that do not overlap. Building a community takes consistency, an editorial line and presence; selling a product in thirty seconds takes a script, a frame and a rhythm. Some people have both, many have only one, and the follower count does not say which.

The price is not calculated on the same base

What makes the price of a file

Preparation time, the shoot, the edit, the number of variants, and above all the extent of the rights granted: duration, territories, placements. Two creators of comparable level will quote close prices for an identical scope, because the cost is a production cost.

What makes the price of a post

The size of the audience, its real engagement, its proximity to your target, the scarcity of the profile, and the fact that the person stakes their reputation. Two profiles of comparable quality can show wide gaps, because the cost is an exposure cost.

Comparing the two rates therefore means comparing a manufacturing price and a distribution price. They never meet, and the arbitration between those two natures of spend is a subject of its own, covered in UGC or influence.

Who carries the duty when the video goes out

This is the point enquiries almost never anticipate, and it follows directly from the same question.

A commercial communication must be identifiable as such by the person watching it. The French framework on commercial influence, set out by the Act of 9 June 2023, targets the person publishing in their own name. When the creator publishes, the duty to disclose is theirs, and any failure shows on their account.

What that changes for the brand

Nothing good if it looks away. A brand is never safe because the duty sits with someone else: the message is still theirs, and a misleading presentation exposes them under unfair commercial practices. That is why a serious brief writes the expected disclosure rather than leaving everyone to improvise.

When the brand publishes a UGC creator's file itself, the question moves without disappearing: it is the brand distributing, so it is for the brand to present the video for what it is.

When the same person does both

The case is frequent and perfectly normal, but it is contracted in two lines rather than one.

The same creator can deliver three videos for your ads and publish a fourth on her account. Those are two services, with two prices and two scopes. Merging them into a single package invariably produces the same conversation three months later, when the brand wants to run the video published on the creator's account as an ad, with nobody having provided for that case.

Three lines are enough to avoid it, in this order:

  1. What is delivered as files, with the number of videos and variants, and the usage window granted.
  2. What is published, on which account, on which date, and for how long the post stays up.
  3. What happens if the brand wants to run the published video, because that is the case that arrives, and it prices better in the cold than after the fact.

Sources

Checked on 11 September 2026. This guide is not legal advice. Where this guide and the official source disagree, the source prevails.