Glossary
What Is Engagement Rate?
Engagement rate measures what share of the people who see a post actually do something with it — like it, comment, save or share it — rather than scrolling past. It is the number that separates an audience that listens from an audience that is merely large, and it is one of the main levers, alongside niche and audience geography, that pushes a creator toward the top or bottom of a given CPM range when quoting a rate.
Saves and shares deserve particular weight, because they are a stronger signal of genuine influence than a like: a save means someone intends to come back to the content, and a share means they are willing to put their own name behind it. Story link-tap rate is the closest thing to a conversion signal a creator can show before a campaign has even run.
What to watch for: engagement pulled from a single viral post rather than a real 30-day average, and engagement compared across formats as if they were the same product. A Reel and a feed post carry different natural engagement rates, so the two should be tracked, and quoted, separately — mixing them either flatters or unfairly deflates the real number a brand should be reacting to.
In practice
A creator's account averages 6.2% engagement on Reels. Quoting a $30 CPM — near the top of the $20-35 Reels range — against that engagement rate is a defensible ask, because the number backing up the premium is sitting right there in the same sentence.
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