Influencer Marketing on YouTube: The $100 per 1,000 Views Pricing Math

Dani Murphy, an eight-year partnerships and influencer marketing veteran currently at MudWater, breaks down exactly how to evaluate and book YouTube creators for your brand. The core pricing framework she uses is simple: roughly $100 per thousand views, and she works backward from that CPM to determine what a partnership is worth before any conversation begins.

On format, Dani argues that a short ad read in the first ten seconds often outperforms both mid-rolls and dedicated videos, making it a lower-risk entry point for testing new creators. Creator alignment matters just as much as reach. Her example: researching whether a creator who publicly committed to cutting out caffeine last year is still on that journey before pitching a wellness brand like MudWater.

She also recommends working with an agency not just to handle the volume of conversations, but because good agencies surface which niches are quietly gaining momentum across multiple brands at once.

If you want a repeatable approach to influencer marketing on YouTube that connects pricing, format selection, and creator vetting into one workflow, this one is worth your two minutes.