Glossary

The vocabulary of creator commerce.

Plain-language definitions, cross-linked across blog posts and resources. Use it as a reference when reading anything else on the site.

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Application loop: The apply-to-brief sourcing mode — creators raise their hand on a published brief and the brand reviews applicants.
Attribution: The process of assigning revenue to the creator, cluster, and campaign that drove it.
Audience signal: Behavioral and demographic data computed from a creator's audience — the input that produces clusters.

Brand-safety review: The step where a creator and their cluster are screened against brand-safety policy before a brief is activated against them.
Brief: The structured document that activates a creator: goals, constraints, deliverables, compensation, disclosure.

Cluster: A grouping of creators built from audience signal — never keyword tags or category labels.
Cluster auto-invite: A sourcing mode where the platform invites the highest-fit creators in a cluster onto a brief automatically, without manual handle-by-handle outreach.
Cohort forward-join: The reporting operation that takes a creator-attributed acquisition cohort and joins their order behavior forward at 30, 60, and 90 days.
Compensation model: How a creator gets paid for a campaign — fixed, rev share, seeding, or hybrid.
CPA: Cost Per Acquisition — total spend divided by attributed conversions.
Creator Commerce OS: An operating layer that turns creators into attributable sales channels.
Creator tier: A status level (Bronze → Diamond) that gates which campaigns a creator sees and what compensation models they qualify for.

Disclosure: Regulator-mandated language that flags a post as paid or sponsored — enforced per region at brief approval.
Draft approval: The step in the brief lifecycle where the brand reviews a creator's draft post and signs off — with disclosure language enforcement built in.

EMV: Earned Media Value — a modeled estimate of the equivalent paid-media spend a piece of organic creator content represents.

First-party attribution: Attribution captured by signals the brand owns: on-page tag, QR, and promo — not third-party cookies.

GMV: Gross Merchandise Value — total transaction value flowing through a platform before fees and costs.

LTO: Limited-Time Offer — a campaign whose value depends on a tight on-sale window.
LTV cohort: A group of customers acquired together — usually via the same creator or cluster — tracked for repeat behavior over 30/60/90+ days.

Multi-currency settlement: Paying creators in their own currency — without forcing the brand to operate that currency.

Product seeding: A compensation model where creators receive free product instead of (or in addition to) cash.
Promo-code attribution: Attributing conversions via per-creator discount codes applied at checkout.

QR-code attribution: Attributing conversions via per-creator QR codes that route to a tracked landing page.

Retail Media Network: Advertising inventory operated by retailers using their first-party shopper data.
Revenue share: A compensation model where the creator earns a percentage of attributed revenue.

Social commerce: Commerce conducted within or initiated by social platforms — TikTok Shop, Instagram Shopping, live shopping, creator storefronts.
Social graph: The network of relationships between creators, audiences, and commerce signals — the substrate clusters are computed from.
Stripe Connect: The Stripe product that powers marketplace-style payouts to third parties — used by cyrqle to pay creators across all four compensation models.

Tentpole window: A defined time window around a high-attention event during which creator activity is scheduled to peak.

UGC: User-generated content — creator-produced media licensed for use by the brand.

White-label: Running cyrqle's platform under an agency's or retailer's brand identity for downstream clients.
Workspace: The top-level tenancy boundary in a Creator Commerce OS — one per brand, agency, or creator organization.