Customer Media: Why Your Customers Are Your Best Ad Channel, with Brand Pay's Mike Haywood

<p>What if your customers were your cheapest media channel? Ryan Martin talks with Mike Haywood, Co-founder of BrandPay, about &quot;customer media&quot;. BrandPay rewards everyday customers, not influencers, with store credit when they post about brands they already love. </p><p>Mike explains how a $1-per-like experiment at his AirBnB retreat grew into a world-first build with Meta. </p><p>He also covers why AI search runs almost entirely on third-party content, and how brands like LSKD now get a new piece of customer content every 33 minutes. On average, the cost per click comes in at about half that of paid media.</p><p>Mike explains how the idea started. During COVID he ran a hinterland retreat and paid guests $1 per like in wine-cellar credit for posting content. Six months later it was named best holiday home in Australia and featured in Vogue. </p><p>He also talks about building a world-first integration with Meta, and the psychology that makes customers post (time and effort, not likes). He shares hard numbers on cost per click, spend-back rates and category performance.</p><ul><li>Why BrandPay separates <strong>customer media</strong> from UGC and creator content</li><li>How a $1-per-like guest experiment led to a Vogue feature and a new startup</li><li>Building with Meta: a world-first API use case and the challenge of fraud prevention</li><li>Why fixed rewards beat per-like rewards: everyday users think in time and effort, not engagement</li><li>How the BrandPay wallet works: store credit in Apple Wallet, worth half its value at other brands, with the other half returned to the rewarding brand</li><li>#ad disclosure, and why customer content doesn&#39;t feel like selling</li><li><strong>AI search and third-party content:</strong> Google lowered its follower threshold for showing third-party content in search from 300k to 35k to 10k</li><li>The review flow: 48-hour auto-approval for reels (24 hours for stories), and 98% approval rates</li><li>Pricing: a 25% fee on top of rewards, with no SaaS or setup fees</li><li>Attribution: first-degree clicks at about 50% of paid media cost per click, plus the &quot;BrandPay halo effect&quot; measured via Triple Whale</li><li>Why brands with real community (Facebook groups, Klaviyo lists) win first</li><li>85% of rewards are spent back with the brand, on average within about 5 days</li><li>Which categories perform best: fashion, beauty, skincare, nutrition, pet food, sunnies and furniture</li><li>First-mover