Meta Partnership Ads have absorbed whitelisting functionality. Every format previously available through whitelisting is now possible via Partnership Ads, with better targeting and delivery.
Creator content is driving paid media success, but teams are still working in silos. Influencer marketers are now brokering a significant chunk of top ad content, but rarely get visibility into paid performance or credit for the results.
Creator marketing requires a cyclical, full-funnel approach beyond one-off activations. Successful brands are moving from individual campaigns to sustainable partnerships that encompass discovery, collaboration, campaign setup, and measurement for long-term business impact.
As much as 75% of top-performing ad content is now being brokered by influencer marketers, yet most of these teams aren't getting credit for driving paid media success.
But this disconnect is ending with the evolution of Meta Partnership Ads, which are absorbing traditional whitelisting functionality while delivering significantly better performance and visibility.
Anders Bill (Co-founder & CPO), Sarah Crow (Head of Creator Strategy) and Lily Comba (CEO of Superbloom) sat down with Reyna Baker and Joana Rocha from Meta to discuss how Meta Partnership Ads represent one of the most untapped opportunities in creator marketing.
Top takeaways from the industry experts
Partnership Ads deliver superior results to whitelisting
Partnership Ads significantly outperform traditional whitelisting and other creator content amplification methods. Brands using Partnership Ads are seeing 19% reduction in CPA, 71% higher brand lift, and 53% higher click-through rate, compared to standard advertising approaches.
The performance advantage stems from Meta's algorithmic approach:
- Partnership ads leverage signals from both creator and brand audiences for stronger ranking.
- Dynamic optimization automatically selects the best-performing handle format for the creative.
- Advanced targeting options remain available, while adding creator audience insights.
"Partnership Ads use signals from both the creator and the brand handles, which is extremely important because that leads to stronger ranking and performance. So, that's the biggest reason why you should consider investing in Partnership Ads."
Joana Rocha
Technical Integration Manager at Meta
Watch Joana dive deeper into the performance advantages of Partnership Ads below👇
Meta also made it clear that organic creator marketing strategies alone are now insufficient to move the needle. Creator marketing teams need to invest actively in paid amplification if they expect their efforts to drive serious ROI.
"We know that today, the most effective way to succeed with creators is to leverage them to do paid partnerships and run meaningful business impacts. It's not enough to just do organic anymore."
Joana Rocha
Technical Integration Manager at Meta
Influencer teams are driving as much as 75% of top ad content
Superfilate’s research across top merchant accounts reveals a blind spot in how companies attribute their advertising success. While paid media teams are relying heavily on creator content for campaigns, influencer marketers rarely get recognition for sourcing high-performing ad creative.
These organizational silos create several problems:
- Influencer teams can't optimize their creator selection based on paid performance data.
- Budget allocation doesn't reflect the true impact of creator partnerships.
- Paid teams miss opportunities to scale what's actually working.
- Companies underinvest in creator relationships that drive their best-performing ads.
Platforms like Superfiliate’s Meta Ads Suite eliminate these coordination challenges through streamlined permissioning and shared dashboards that enable marketers to see organic and paid performance in one place.
Anders explains how Superfiliate's Meta Ads Suite forms the “connective tissue” between influencer marketers and paid teams👇
"The influencer marketing team was quietly the backbone of the paid media team for so many of these organizations. And they weren't getting any credit for that."
Anders Bill
Co-founder & CPO of Superfiliate
Your creator marketing strategy needs to span the entire funnel
Joana and Reyna emphasized that effective creator marketing using Partnership Ads requires a cyclical, full-funnel approach, rather than one-off activations of creators.
Hear Joana explain why moving beyond individual campaigns to sustainable creator partnerships drives long-term results 👇
Phases of the creator marketing funnel
The discovery phase. Identifying creators who align with your brand values and campaign objectives from both organic and paid perspectives.
Evaluation and collaboration. Once you identify potential creators, the focus shifts to giving them guidance so they can create authentic content from an organic lens. The goal is enabling creators to produce content that feels natural to their audience, while still meeting brand objectives.
Campaign setup and testing. High-performing organic content gets amplified through paid ads. Compare results to existing campaigns to determine what drives the most performance for your specific business.
Measurement and optimization. Campaign measurement should be central to your strategy, whether through A/B testing or conversion lift studies. Your KPIs will vary significantly based on campaign objectives - awareness metrics look very different from lower-funnel metrics like ROAS.
"You start in the discovery phase, but it should be a cyclical experience where you're discovering creators, evaluating new creators that would work for your brand, for an upcoming campaign, from a long-term partnership perspective."
Reyna Baker
Strategic Partnerships Manager at Meta
Getting started with Partnership Ads
Rather than trying to broker relationships specifically for ad content, start with the creator content you already have. In addition to staying within budget, this approach also helps to combat creative fatigue by providing fresh assets for ad campaigns with quicker implementation.
1. Audit existing high-performing organic content
Prioritize high-engagement or viral content where the creator is clearly showcasing your product and its use case. Also look for content that adds diverse representation to your paid narrative and reinforces your current campaign messaging.
2. Establish cross-team collaboration
Create shared visibility between influencer marketing and paid media teams to optimize creator selection and campaign performance.
3. Implement streamlined creator onboarding
Use a platform like Superfiliate that offers one-click ad account authentication to eliminate traditional permissioning friction within Meta Business Manager and enable faster campaign launches.
4. Experiment with multiple handle formats
Leverage Meta's dynamic optimization to automatically determine whether creator-only, brand-only, or dual handles perform best for your audience. Partnership Ads now allow for a single header format with the creator’s handle just like traditional influencer whitelisting, addressing previous concerns about authenticity and ads feeling “natural”.
5. Organic Performance Is a Poor Predictor of Paid Success
It’s a logical assumption that successful content will perform well in paid campaigns, but don’t rely solely on organic metrics to choose creative. Test a diverse range of creator content, not just your top performers, and maintain a budget for systematic testing.
Listen to Lily explain why organic performance doesn't always predict paid success 👇
"Test everything because there are innumerable examples I have of a creator's organic post performing moderately well, but then the paid media team takes that content and puts it through as a Partnership Ad. That's when it's 4Xing on ROAS."
Lily Comba
CEO of Superbloom
What Partnership Ads mean for influencer & paid media teams
Partnership Ads fundamentally change how creator marketing integrates with your broader digital strategy. Both influencer and paid teams can now demonstrate clear ROI on paid amplification, while also championing the value of authentic creator relationships.
For influencer marketers:
- Understand your paid team's KPIs and media mix priorities before pitching creators.
- Lead with the inherent benefits creators receive from partnership ads (increased exposure, follower growth).
- Negotiate usage rights that include editing permissions for paid optimization.
- Focus on relationship-building to enable longer-term partnership discussions.
For paid media teams:
- Collaborate with influencer marketers to identify creators with brand affinity beyond just engagement metrics.
- Test creator content variations alongside traditional creative.
- Use creator insights to inform broader audience targeting strategies.
Ready to bridge your influencer and paid media teams?
Partnership Ads represent the future of creator marketing - streamlined, performance-driven, and organizationally aligned. Superfiliate’s Meta Ads Suite helps to bridge this gap by providing:
- One-click authentication for creator ad accounts.
- Real-time performance insights for influencer marketers and paid media teams.
- ROAS, spend, and engagement data for all creator content.
- Ability to identify top-performing creators for paid amplification or contract extensions.
- Clear attribution for paid media success driven by creator relationships.
See how Superfiliate's Meta Ads Suite can unify your teams and amplify your creator-led advertising efforts
Beth Owens is Superfiliate's Head of Content and GTM storyteller. On the weekends, you'll find her on the yoga mat or searching out the perfect flat white in whichever city she is currently inhabiting ☕️
