Budget, CPM & Rewards

Jestr campaigns use a performance-based reward model: instead of paying creators a fixed amount for each piece of content, creators earn based on the eligible views their content generates.

When setting up a campaign, there are four numbers that are particularly important to understand:

• Campaign budget
• Creator pool
• CPM
• Maximum reward per creator

Together, these determine how much money is available to creators and how individual creators can earn from your campaign.

What is CPM?

CPM stands for Cost Per Mille, or the amount paid per 1,000 views.

On Jestr, CPM is used to determine how quickly creators earn rewards as their content generates eligible views.

For example, at a $6 CPM:

1,000 eligible views → $6

10,000 eligible views → $60

100,000 eligible views → $600

250,000 eligible views → $1,500

Creators continue earning at this rate until they reach their applicable maximum reward, the campaign creator pool is exhausted, or the campaign otherwise stops tracking eligible rewards.

Campaign budget vs. creator pool

The campaign budget is the total amount you're committing to the campaign, including Jestr's fee.

The creator pool is the portion of that budget available to pay creators.

Jestr's standard campaign fee is:

• 25% for campaigns below $10,000
• 20% for campaigns of $10,000 or more

The fee is included in your campaign budget, rather than added on top.

For example:

Campaign Budget	Creator Pool	Jestr Fee
$5,000	$3,750	$1,250
$10,000	$8,000	$2,000
$15,000	$12,000	$3,000

So if you create a $15,000 campaign, you aren't paying $15,000 plus an additional fee. Your total campaign budget is $15,000, of which $12,000 is available for creator rewards.

Your creator pool is shown directly during campaign setup so you can always see how much of your budget will be available to creators.

How creator rewards are calculated

Once creators begin posting, Jestr tracks the eligible views generated by their submissions.

During each campaign reward cycle, those new views are converted into rewards using the CPM applicable to that creator.

At a $6 CPM, for example, a creator generating 50,000 new eligible views would generate:

50,000 ÷ 1,000 × $6 = $300

That amount is deducted from the available creator pool and allocated to the creator, subject to their applicable reward maximum and the remaining campaign budget.

Jestr handles this process automatically throughout your campaign.

For a deeper explanation of the campaign reward cycle and what happens as your creator pool is exhausted, see Active Campaigns.

Earning thresholds

Creators must reach a minimum number of eligible views before their content begins earning rewards.

The threshold depends on creator type:

• Partners: 2,000 eligible views
• UGC creators: 1,000 eligible views

These thresholds allow Jestr to support a much broader range of creators while maintaining different reward structures between creator tiers.

For more information on these tiers, see Types of Creators.

Maximum rewards

Your maximum reward limits how much an individual creator can earn from their initial submission batch.

For example, imagine your campaign has:

• $6 CPM
• 3 submissions per creator
• $1,500 maximum reward

At $6 CPM, a creator reaches their $1,500 maximum after generating 250,000 eligible views.

If their submissions eventually generate 500,000 views, they'll still earn a maximum of $1,500 from that batch.

The additional views continue contributing to your campaign's total performance, but don't create additional rewards for that creator.

For more information on how multiple platform posts and submissions contribute toward a creator's maximum, see How Submissions Work.

Why maximum rewards scale with your budget

Jestr enforces a minimum creator reward maximum based on the size of your campaign budget.

As your campaign budget increases, the minimum maximum reward increases with it, up to the standard floor of $1,000 per creator.

This is intentional.

A larger campaign needs enough earning potential to remain attractive to strong creators. For example, pairing a $50,000 campaign with a $500 creator maximum would mean creators who generate significant performance could hit their earning ceiling very quickly despite substantial campaign budget remaining.

That creates two problems:

1. Strong-performing creators have less incentive to participate or continue producing content.
2. Your campaign may struggle to efficiently utilize its budget because individual creators can't earn enough from the performance they're generating.

For this reason, Jestr prevents campaign budgets from increasing indefinitely while creator reward maximums remain artificially low.

Choosing a good maximum reward

Jestr's minimum creator maximum should be treated as a starting point, not necessarily the recommended amount for your campaign.

As a general rule, around 10% of your overall campaign budget is a useful baseline when thinking about creator maximums.

For example:

$5,000 campaign → ~$500+ maximum

$10,000 campaign → ~$1,000+ maximum

$15,000 campaign → ~$1,500+ maximum

Depending on your game, campaign goals, and the creators you're hoping to attract, it can make sense to go higher.

For example, we may recommend an $800 maximum on a $5,000 campaign or a $1,500 maximum on a $10,000 campaign when we think giving creators more earning potential will benefit the campaign.

Higher maximums can be particularly useful when you want to:

• Make the campaign more attractive to larger or more established creators
• Give breakout content more room to earn
• Concentrate more of your budget among creators who are generating strong results
• Give creators greater upside for investing time into your game

There's no single maximum that's right for every campaign. A smaller maximum spreads your creator pool across more creators, while a larger maximum gives individual creators more earning potential.

The Jestr team may recommend adjusting your maximum during Campaign Review based on your game, budget, and campaign goals.

The important thing is to avoid treating the minimum as something to optimize toward. Increasing your overall budget while keeping creator earning potential as low as possible can make the campaign less attractive and make it harder to effectively utilize that additional budget.

Submission limits and creator maximums

Your submission limit determines how many different pieces of content a creator can submit as part of their batch.

Your maximum reward determines how much that creator can earn from the batch as a whole.

These are separate settings.

For example:

3 submissions + $1,500 maximum

does not mean each submission can earn $1,500.

The creator can submit up to three pieces of content, with the performance of all three contributing toward the same $1,500 total maximum.

We generally recommend allowing multiple submissions so creators have room to experiment with different ideas, hooks, and gameplay moments rather than relying on a single piece of content.

For more information, see How Submissions Work.

Localized CPMs

The CPM you set during campaign creation represents the standard rate for a Partner creator in the base region.

Actual creator reward rates may be localized depending on the creator's region.

This allows Jestr to support a global creator ecosystem while accounting for differences between creator markets.

You don't need to manually configure rates for individual countries. Jestr automatically applies the appropriate localized CPM when calculating each creator's rewards.

When viewing a creator, you can hover over their region to see the rate that applies to them.

UGC creator CPMs

UGC creators also earn at a lower CPM than Partners.

Their applicable reward rate takes their creator tier and region into account automatically.

This means two creators participating in the same campaign may earn at different CPMs depending on their creator type and location, even though you configured a single standard CPM when creating the campaign.

These adjustments happen automatically and don't require any additional campaign setup from your team.

For more information on why the UGC reward structure differs, see Types of Creators.

CPM vs. effective CPM

The CPM you set determines how creators earn, but it isn't necessarily the final cost of the views your campaign generates.

Your effective CPM (eCPM) measures what your campaign actually paid for the total performance it generated:

Campaign spend ÷ total tracked campaign views × 1,000

For example, if a creator earns their $1,500 maximum at a $6 CPM but their content ultimately generates 500,000 tracked views, those views were generated for $1,500 in creator rewards.

That represents an effective CPM of $3.00, despite the creator's reward rate being $6 CPM.

Why can effective CPM be lower?

There are several ways your effective CPM can end up below the standard CPM you've set:

• Creators reach their maximum reward. Their content can continue generating tracked views after they've stopped earning additional rewards.
• UGC creators generate views. UGC creators earn at a lower rate than the standard Partner CPM, so strong UGC performance can reduce your blended campaign cost.
• Localized creators generate views. Creators in regions with lower localized CPMs can generate performance at a lower reward rate.
• Content continues performing after the creator pool is exhausted. Jestr continues tracking campaign performance for a period after rewards have stopped, allowing additional long-tail views to contribute to your reported results.

This means the CPM you enter during campaign setup should be thought of primarily as a creator reward rate, rather than a guarantee of what every 1,000 campaign views will ultimately cost you.

Set CPM → determines the standard rate at which creators can earn

Effective CPM → measures the actual cost of your campaign's tracked performance

Long-tail performance

Your reported effective CPM is based on the views Jestr tracks — but creator content can continue generating views long after campaign tracking has ended.

A video may continue accumulating views over time or even gain significant traction later. Those views can continue creating awareness for your game without creating additional campaign spend, even though they may no longer be reflected in Jestr's reporting.

Because of this, the true lifetime cost per 1,000 views generated by your campaign content may ultimately be even lower than the effective CPM shown in Jestr.

For more information on how long-tail tracking works after your campaign budget is exhausted or your campaign ends, see Active Campaigns.

Bonus Batches

A creator reaching their maximum reward doesn't necessarily mean they have to stop participating.

Creators can request a Bonus Batch, which gives them another set of submissions with its own separate reward maximum.

Bonus Batches can be especially useful for creators who have performed well and want to continue making content for your game.

Bonus Batches

Increasing your budget after launch

Campaign budgets can also be increased while a campaign is running, but changing your budget can affect other parts of your campaign.

Depending on the change, this may affect your fee rate, creator maximums, available creator pool, and rewards owed to existing submissions.

In particular, adding budget after a campaign has already exhausted its creator pool can cause existing eligible content to consume some or all of the new budget during the next reward cycle.

For this reason, we strongly recommend increasing a campaign's budget before it runs out, whenever possible.

For a full explanation of what happens when you modify a live campaign, see Adjusting Live Campaigns.

What if my full budget isn't used?

You aren't charged the full campaign fee on money that ultimately isn't utilized by your campaign.

If a campaign ends with unused creator budget, the unused portion — along with the corresponding portion of Jestr's fee — is returned to your account as credit.

The calculation is proportional to the amount of the creator pool actually utilized.

For a complete explanation of how unused campaign funds and credits are calculated, see Jestr Credits.

Next: Bonus Batches

Campaign rewards normally stop for an individual creator once they reach their batch maximum, but strong creators may want to keep going.

Continue to Bonus Batches to learn how you can give individual creators additional submissions and earning potential without changing the limits for everyone else.