Paid and UGC ads
Intempt-run paid media, fed by creators who film one recipe as one ad: real GTM-engineering workflows, not feature tours, with creators earning a share of ad spend plus a retainer floor.
Paid is the channel that buys reach up front, before any sharing or rev-share has accrued. It primes the pump; the loop keeps it running. This page is how we run paid media and the performance creator program that feeds it. The channel order is in channels-overview; the loop it pours into is in growth-flywheel.
Paid has two halves that work together: Intempt runs paid media, and creators supply the UGC that makes the best-performing ads. The second half is a committed program with its own terms and its own unfair advantage, and most of this page is about it.
Intempt-run paid media
Intempt runs performance marketing across the platforms our ICP sits on: Meta, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, and search. The discipline is the same as every other channel:
- It lands on the free plan. A paid click goes to the free plan, often carrying a Launch offer code (see campaigns-and-coupons), where the AI credits in plg-distribution activate the signup.
- It ladders to the thesis. The ad sells the self-driving GTM engine in who-we-build-for, not a feature.
- It is measured on the one number. Cost per activated free workspace and the self-serve revenue behind it, with a source and a pull date on every figure. Spend that does not activate gets cut.
Paid is the most expensive channel per signup, which is why it sits below PLG, content, and creators in the order. We run it for reach the compounding channels cannot reach on their own, and we feed it creative from the UGC program below so the ads actually perform.
The UGC Ads creator program
This is the committed performance creator model, and it is built on one idea that nobody else running UGC can copy.
Governing document: the Creator Terms at /creator-terms. Confirm the current version before you sign a creator.
The secret sauce: one recipe, one ad
Intempt's creative engine is its library of about 300 recipes. A recipe is a named GTM play, a secret sauce, across the five products: Data, Design, Marketing, Sales, and Analytics. The rule that drives the whole program is simple: one recipe is one UGC ad. A creator picks a recipe, runs that GTM-engineering workflow for real on Intempt, films it in their own voice, and that film is the ad.
That one rule is what makes Intempt's UGC different from every product-demo UGC program in the market. The ad shows the self-driving GTM workflow people actually want to copy, not a feature tour. Three consequences follow, and each one is a direct advantage:
- An endless supply of genuinely distinct concepts. About 300 recipes, times five products, times the personas in who-we-build-for, is a near-endless set of concepts that are different from each other at the level of the play, not the hook. That is exactly the raw material you need to beat Meta's similarity throttle (more below).
- Every ad is a real, runnable play. The recipe is publishable, so the audience can go run the exact thing they just watched, in minutes, on the free plan. The ad is not a promise about the product; it is a demonstration of the product doing the viewer's job.
- The creative doubles as product. A filmed recipe is also a recipe other teams run (the Build track) and a referral surface (the Share track). One video can earn up to three ways. The creative is not a cost that evaporates after the spend; it becomes a published asset that keeps working.
Keep this at the front of every brief and every creator call. The recipe library is the asset. The ad is just the recipe, filmed.
How an ad is made
The creator does the work on the real product, not to a storyboard.
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| Pick a recipe | The creator chooses a recipe that fits their audience and the gap the roster needs filled (a product lane, a persona, a region). The partner manager points them at recipes that are uncovered or winning, never at a recipe the leaderboard has already saturated. |
| Run it for real | The creator runs that GTM-engineering workflow on Intempt, on the free plan, on a seeded demo project. The ad has to show the play working, so the creator actually makes it work first. |
| Film it in their voice | Intempt gives the frame and the facts, not a script. The creator tells the story the way their audience already trusts them to tell it. A script in the creator's mouth reads as an ad; the creator's own voice reads as a recommendation. |
| Disclose | The creator discloses the paid relationship clearly, as the FTC requires (#ad or #sponsored, or an equivalent spoken disclosure). |
The operating routine for this, step by step with owners and timing, is in ugc-ad-production. Onboarding a new creator onto the roster is in creator-onboarding.
Pay
A creator earns on the ad spend that runs behind their videos, with a floor that de-risks the first couple of months.
| Element | How it works |
|---|---|
| Performance fee | The creator earns a percentage of the ad spend Intempt runs behind their videos. Default rate: 7% (set per order against CAC). It accrues as long as Intempt keeps spending behind the content, with no fixed end date and no cap, and it stops when the ads stop. Nobody is paid for a video that never gets spend. |
| Smart retainer (a floor, not a fee) | An order may set a monthly minimum tied to a video quota. Reference: 1,000 dollars a month for 25 videos. The retainer is a floor: hit the quota, and if the performance fee is below the floor, Intempt tops it up to the floor; if the fee meets or beats the floor, there is no top-up and the creator keeps the full fee. A retainer can be time-limited by the order. It exists to de-risk month 1 and month 2, before spend has ramped. |
Worked example, at a 7% fee, a 1,000 dollar floor, and the 25-video quota met each month:
| Month | Ad spend behind the videos | 7% fee | Top-up to floor | Creator is paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | 6,000 | 420 | 580 | 1,000 |
| Month 2 | 12,000 | 840 | 160 | 1,000 |
| Month 3 | 30,000 | 2,100 | 0 | 2,100 |
By month 3 the fee has cleared the floor, the top-up is gone, and the creator is earning on performance alone. The floor did its job early and then got out of the way.
It stacks with the other earning paths. The UGC ads fee is separate from, and additional to, anything the creator earns elsewhere. The same filmed recipe can earn three ways at once:
- UGC ads fee (this program): a share of the ad spend behind their videos.
- Referral commission (Share track, influencers): if the video carries the creator's referral link or code, the signups it drives earn their 30% rev-share under the Affiliate Terms.
- Recipe royalty (Build track): if they publish the recipe, 20% of the credits it burns in other orgs.
Taking the UGC ads fee never reduces a referral commission or a recipe royalty. Agencies stay under the Agency Terms, separately.
Whitelisting and content ownership
The creator keeps their content. Intempt licenses it.
| Element | How it works |
|---|---|
| Whitelisting license | The creator grants Intempt a non-exclusive license to run the UGC as paid ads on Meta, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn, including from or in partnership with the creator's own handle (Spark Ads or partnership access), for the term in the order. Running the ad from the creator's handle is the point: it keeps the recommendation in the creator's voice even as paid media. |
| Content ownership | The creator owns the content they make. Intempt does not acquire ownership. Beyond the paid-media license, Intempt gets a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reuse and clip the content on its own channels for the order's term. Exclusivity or perpetual rights are priced separately, and only if the order says so. |
The creative loop and the 60% rule
Volume comes from each creator making many distinct recipe-ads, not from piling many creators onto one play. At roughly 50 active creators, the roster produces 500 to 700 net-new ads a month.
The constraint that shapes all of this is Meta's similarity throttle. Meta suppresses reach for creative that is about 60% or more similar to creative already running (this is an operator estimate, not a published Meta rule). So the program biases hard toward net-new concepts, and this is exactly where the recipe library is the unfair advantage: a library of about 300 distinct plays is a library of about 300 distinct concepts, which is the one thing the 60% throttle cannot starve.
A new hook is not a new concept. A new recipe is. So is a new persona, a new problem or use case, or a new demonstration. Changing the first line over the same play is still the same ad to Meta.
When a creator falls into a rut, the loop is:
| Stage | What it looks like | What the coach does |
|---|---|---|
| Spot the rut | The creator is copying the current leaderboard winner. | Name it early, before the spend is wasted. |
| See the cluster | Their new videos are 60%-plus similar to the winner, so Meta throttles them and the effort is wasted. | Show them the cluster in the account on the weekly call. |
| Push | "Test, don't copy." | Point them at the testing that produced the winner, not at the winner itself. |
| New concept | A new recipe opens a new door the throttle has not seen. | Hand them an uncovered recipe, persona, or use case from the library. |
The recipe library is what makes that fourth step cheap. When a creator ruts, there is always another genuinely distinct play to hand them, because the library has hundreds.
Scale
The roster grows on purpose, not all at once.
| Stage | Active creators |
|---|---|
| Start | 5 |
| Then | 10 |
| Then | 20 |
| Then | 40 |
| Steady state | 40 to 60 |
The ramp runs over about four months, and 40 to 60 is the ideal ceiling. After the ramp, "then only killers": add a creator only if they clear the high bar. One performance marketer runs the whole account, 50 creators and 500 to 700 ads a month, because payout, whitelisting, and attribution are systematized rather than handled one creator at a time.
Culture: run it like a coached sales team
A small group built on purpose outworks a thousand sign-and-see creators. The program is run like a coached sales team, and retention is the metric: a creator still submitting at 90 days is the win.
- Coaches in the DMs. Creator coaches run the calls and stay in the DMs between them. The partner manager and founder keep an open calendar for strategy time.
- A weekly call with the performance marketer. Walk the ad account together: what is winning and why, which recipes to film next, which experiments to run next. Creators see the leaderboard and the account. Radical transparency is the point; they are being coached on real numbers, not told to post more.
- Giveaways. Cash and gear (cameras, mics, Meta Ray-Ban glasses) for performance.
- The retreat. Top performers fly to the SF office for a week of coaching, product time, and brainstorming. Status and belonging are the retention mechanism, not a bigger fee.
Who owns what
| Role | Owns | Documented in |
|---|---|---|
| Creator-partnerships (partner manager) | Recruits the roster, runs the weekly call, fills the gaps, keeps retention up. | creator-partnerships and the careers page. |
| Performance Marketer | Runs the ad account, decides what gets spend, reads the account on the weekly call. | The careers page. |
| Creator in Residence | The internal, full-time face of the motion: runs a real GTM motion in public, publishes recipes, a newsletter, and a show. One credible person. | The careers page. |
The Creator in Residence is internal and the roster is external, but they share the same thesis: the recipe is the creative, and the creative is the product.
Honesty caveats
Carry these. Do not drop them.
- Proven, but growth-funded. This model is proven at Wispr Flow, but Wispr ran it VC-funded for maximum growth. Tune the spend intensity to Intempt's CAC and goal; do not copy a spend level blindly.
- Tune to CAC. The 7% and the floor are set per order against CAC. Every real figure in a live order or report carries a source and a pull date.
How it feeds the loop
Paid and UGC ads end where every channel ends: a new person on the free plan. The difference is that paid buys that reach up front instead of waiting for it to compound, and the UGC program turns the creators who supply the creative into people who also earn on the signups and the recipes, so a paid channel feeds the self-funding loops instead of only spending. The filmed recipe is the clearest example of the flywheel: one piece of work that is an ad, a published recipe, and a referral surface at the same time.
Related: channels-overview · influencers · creator-operations · ugc-ad-production · creator-onboarding · who-we-build-for · growth-flywheel.