How to use partnership ads and creator whitelisting

Should you start with a creator, founder, or publisher?

Start with who has something useful to say about the product. A creator can show how it fits into their routine. A founder can explain why it exists and answer the questions customers keep asking. A publisher can give a product more room for explanation through a clearly labeled advertorial. Pick the format around the buying question you need to answer.

If you are the founder, you already have material. Open your support inbox, choose one question, and record yourself answering it. Show the product while you explain. You can test a few different openings without producing a completely new video each time.

For creators, look for someone who feels like they are talking to the person watching. Their ability to explain and demonstrate the product matters more than a checkmark. Watch their existing content, read the comments, and ask whether your customer would recognize themselves in it.

What do I mean by Secondary Presence?

In the original newsletters, I describe Secondary Presence as combining what the brand knows about its customers with another account’s content, perspective, and trust. The brand still funds and manages the campaign. The person delivering the message gives the customer another way to understand the product.

That person still needs a credible reason to talk about it. A founder showing why they changed an ingredient, or a creator demonstrating something they use, gives you material for a useful ad. Putting an unrelated face on your usual product claims does very little to improve the explanation.

At Hint, I ran ads from the founder’s accounts as part of our acquisition work. The original issues describe those results in their historical context. Use the idea as a test for your own business; the same account format does not promise the same result.

What should you agree with the creator before launch?

Be specific about what you are buying. A video file, an organic post, and permission to advertise from someone’s account are different deliverables. If you want all three, put all three in the brief and agree on the fee before production.

Write down the platforms, content, usage period, approved edits, who signs off, and who handles comments. Confirm the rights to any music or other material in the ad. Set a date to stop the campaign or renew the agreement, with someone responsible for checking it.

Account-level access can make an ongoing relationship easier to manage. For a single test, permission for the specific post may be enough. Ask for the access the campaign needs, then make sure the actual ad stays within what you agreed.

• Which posts or files can we use, and from which account?
• Where can the ads run, and for how long?
• Can we change the opening, caption, music, or destination?
• Who approves the final ad and answers customer comments?
• What is the fee, and what happens when the usage period ends?

How do you set up Meta partnership ads?

Meta renamed branded content ads to partnership ads. Choose the permission route before building the campaign: a code for particular content, or account-level access for an ongoing partnership. Both require an eligible account and eligible content.

For account-level access, open Meta Business Suite, choose Creator Marketing, then Manage permissions under Creators. Select Add partnership, find the partner, choose the account you will use, and send the request. The partner must accept it before you use that access.

For an existing Instagram post, the creator opens the post’s menu, chooses Partnership label & ads, and turns on Get partnership ad code. On Facebook, the existing post’s menu uses Share partnership ad code. The creator shares the code with the advertiser.

In Ads Manager, create the campaign and set its objective, budget, audience, and schedule. At the ad level, enable Partnership ad. For the code route, choose Enter ad code or post info and add the code. Review the partner identities, creative, destination, and preview before publishing. Menu labels can change; the official instructions are linked below.

How do you set up TikTok Spark Ads?

Spark Ads promote an organic TikTok post from your account or an authorized creator account. For a creator’s existing video, they open its menu, go to Ad settings, and generate an authorization code. Agree on the authorization period before launch.

In a manual or search campaign in TikTok Ads Manager, set the campaign and ad group, then open Ad creatives. Use Add videos or images, select TikTok posts, and Add post to enter the code. Check the authorization period, select the post, and complete the destination and tracking before publishing. Smart+ has a separate creation flow.

Finalize the caption before authorization: an existing authorized post’s caption cannot be edited during this flow. A private video becomes public when used in a campaign and cannot be made private during promotion. Review those details with the creator before using the code.

How should publisher whitelisting and advertorials work?

A publisher format gives you more room to explain a product. The useful part is the story: what happened, what the person tried, what they learned, and why the product belongs in that situation. Every example, experience, and comparison needs to be real.

If the brand pays for the article or owns the publication, make the commercial relationship clear. A publisher-style layout does not turn an ad into independent reporting. The FTC’s native advertising guidance explains why disclosures must be clear and prominent when readers could mistake advertising for editorial content.

Look at the whole route. The ad should lead to the story it promised, and that story should lead to a relevant offer. The customer should understand the product and the price before checkout. Give someone responsibility for answering comments from the account running the ad.

How do you know whether the test is working?

Write the question before spending: does this creator’s explanation help this audience buy? Keep the offer and destination comparable to your existing campaign so you can understand the difference. A test that changes the person, audience, price, and page at once will be harder to learn from.

Include the creator’s fee and production cost when judging acquisition economics. Watch the path from click to purchase, including conversion rate, order value, refunds, and repeat purchases when enough time has passed. Use comments to find questions the next creative or landing page should answer.

Choose your spending limit and what you need to learn before launch. If a video gets attention but customers still do not understand the offer, work on that handoff. If it attracts the wrong people, revisit the audience and message. A creator account is an input to the campaign, not an explanation for every result.