In this report:
Creator-led advertising isn’t just welcome on Meta’s platforms. It’s winning.
The hidden operational bottlenecks that are restricting Partnership Ad spend.
Why discovery, authentication, and attribution must work as one integrated system to scale Partnership Ads.
Creator content is the new performance creative.
For brands facing rising CAC and creative fatigue, creator-led ads offer a rare performance arbitrage: the ability to take proven organic content and amplify it with platform-native support.
Types of creator-led ad inventory
This proven performance is repositioning creators not just
as collaborators—but as a source of high-performing ad inventory.
As creators continue testing and iterating in their content,
we're seeing a shift in their skillsets and areas of focus:
Personality-first creators
Producing relatable, engaging content for communities in a particular niche or interest.
Hybrid creators
Developing more advanced technical skills and investing in formats like Reels.
Craft creators
Pushing the limits with highly technical skill sets, working with AI and AR to elevate their digital craft.
Creators aren’t just content producers; they’re storytellers with immensely loyal audiences. Today’s influencers serve as trusted advisors with unique viewpoints that their followers want to hear and engage with.
Partnership Ads—Meta’s preferred ad format for amplifying creator content—fit perfectly into this evolution in paid media. Partnership Ads are not a rebrand of whitelisting; they’re tailor-made for scaling and optimizing creator-led advertising:
Whitelisting
Ad is displayed solely from the creator's handle.
Multi-step setup inside Meta Business Manager, requires detailed instructions for creators.
Limited control over content once live (no comment moderation without additional permissions).
Advanced targeting options including location, demographics, custom audiences, and Lookalike Audiences.
Legacy system discouraged by Meta in favor of Partnership Ads.
Partnership Ads
Choose between multiple handle variations (creator, just brand, creator x brand, and brand x creator).
Streamlined one-click authentication via Superfiliate.
Full control over comment moderation, ad targeting, budget, and creative optimization.
Advanced targeting, plus leveraging signals for creator and brand accounts for better ranking.
Meta’s preferred method for amplifying creator content.
How Meta is betting on Partnership Ads.
Partnership Ads are the ultimate signal: creator content isn’t just welcome on Meta’s platforms—it’s winning. Partnership Ads are driving:
reduction in CPA
higher brand lift
higher click-through rate
As Meta's partnership team explains, Partnership Ads leverage signals from both the brand and the creator, driving stronger performance and reach than whitelisting allows for.
Better systems = better ROAS
Out of all the brands we surveyed, 50% reported a 1-2x ROAS from Partnership Ads (solid performance) while 12% are seeing an impressive 3-5x ROAS (exceptional performance).
28% of brands who are spending $250K+ monthly are reporting a consistent 3-5x ROAS, showing how ongoing testing and diversification during scaling creates better performance outcomes.
How to select the best creator content for Partnership Ads:
Set an objective. Decide whether you’re chasing brand awareness, direct sales, or community engagement.
Message Alignment. Ensure creators naturally reinforce your key campaign messages.
Product Integration: Prioritize content with clear, authentic product showcases that feel native, not scripted.
Testing: Never assume that strong organic success will translate to paid; always validate with data.
Manual discovery limits creator volume.
Authentication friction prevents the activation of discovered creators.
Attribution gaps make it challenging to identify and optimize what is working.
And the cycle repeats, preventing brands from scaling Partnership Ads.
Test everything. Content which might not have performed that well organically can absolutely crush it in paid. It could be a piece of content that's super authentic to the influencer and their style, but because it’s a novelty to the brand, it does a great job at education and awareness.
Meta's expansion of Partnership Ads’ functionality sends a clear message: As the platform’s preferred format for amplifying creator content, brands are going to win by embracing the future of creator-led advertising.
Jay Hunter, CRO of MaryRuth Organics, explains why the brand is transferring ad spend from whitelisting to Partnership Ads:
The question isn't whether Partnership Ads work; It’s why more brands aren’t scaling them systematically.
The Partnership Ads satisfaction gap
The brands spending the most on Partnership Ads are seeing the best returns—but even they feel that they are under-investing.
Just 4% of brands we surveyed are satisfied by their current investment in creator partnerships
In other words, 96% of brands see untapped potential and headroom to grow.
What’s holding back Partnership Ad spend?
Despite experiencing strong ROAS from Partnership Ads, brands are reporting operational bottlenecks that are hampering their ability to increase ad spend:
Discovery is the #1 challenge
- 45% of brands struggle with discovering new creators based on accurate data.
- 41% of brands have difficulty measuring ad performance directly tied to the creator.
- 37% of brands have difficulty authenticating the creator's ad account.
Here’s why these problems compound.
Set an objective. Decide whether you’re chasing brand awareness, direct sales, or community engagement.
Message Alignment. Ensure creators naturally reinforce your key campaign messages.
Product Integration: Prioritize content with clear, authentic product showcases that feel native, not scripted.
Testing: Never assume that strong organic success will translate to paid; always validate with data.
Manual discovery limits creator volume.
Authentication friction prevents the activation of discovered creators.
Attribution gaps make it challenging to identify and optimize what is working.
And the cycle repeats, preventing brands from scaling Partnership Ads.
It's not a creative problem. It's a systems problem.
Our survey data shows that the core challenge facing influencer marketers and paid teams isn't proving that Partnership Ads work; it's a lack of infrastructure to scale what's already working.
Why traditional creator discovery is failing.
The real reason almost half of brands struggle with creator discovery isn't a lack of databases or lists—it's a lack of actionable creator intelligence.
Static databases, scraped bios, and time-intensive filtering offers influencer marketers little to no visibility into paid performance, brand fit, or whether creator accounts are authenticated for paid amplification.
Even when influencer marketers broker the majority of high-performing ad content, disconnected systems and manual processes are preventing those partnerships from scaling.
Anders Bill, co-founder and CPO of Superfiliate, explains why the lack of "connective tissue" between Influencer and Paid means only a fraction of Partnership Ads campaigns make it live:
From this survey, Superfiliate identified that discovery, authentication, and attribution must work as one integrated system for brands to successfully scale Partnership Ads:
Discovery
Finding creators isn't enough—you need actionable intelligence on Partnership Ad performance, audience alignment, and activation readiness.
Authentication
Each additional creator partnership multiplies authentication friction. What starts as manageable manual processes becomes an expensive bottleneck that prevents Partnership Ad scaling.
Attribution
Full performance tracking from discovery through campaign results creates a flywheel—each Partnership Ad campaign improves future creator selection.
Different budgets, different roadblocks
For brands with smaller ad budgets, attribution challenges are proving to be a particular barrier to further Partnership Ad investment:
58% of brands we surveyed who are spending under $250K per month on Partnership Ads report a lack of transparency in reporting at the campaign level as a key challenge, [versus 28% of brands spending over $250K per month.]
But when investment in Partnership Ads grows, the problem shifts. As brands attempt to scale and launch more creator partnerships, difficulty with authenticating creator ad accounts becomes more apparent:
For high-spenders, it’s fragmented systems that are slowing creator activation. Among brands spending over $250K per month on Partnership Ads, 57% report authentication as a major blocker, [versus 35% of brands that are spending less than $250K per month.]
Without unified infrastructure built specifically for paid amplification, influencer marketing and paid teams of all budgets are held back in their ability to find, activate, and scale their best-performing creator partnerships.
Effective creator discovery isn’t just sourcing. It’s activation.
The consensus is overwhelming; accessible, systematic creator discovery would be a game-changer for brands’ ability to scale Partnership Ads.
83% of all brands we surveyed would increase investment in creator partnerships if they had better discovery tools.
83% of all brands we surveyed would increase investment in creator partnerships if they had better discovery tools.
But brands aren’t just saying they want to scale ad spend—those who are already spending more on Partnership Ads are ready to put the money down.
Brands surveyed who are spending over $250K per month are significantly more likely to increase budget for their influencer/affiliate team with better discovery tools (71%) compared to those spending less than $250K per month (47%).
This shows that discovery infrastructure doesn't just improve efficiency—it unlocks budget that's currently trapped by operational bottlenecks.
But what discovery data and systems do brands need to find high-performing creators?
To unlock true scale for Partnership Ads, creator discovery tools need to evolve beyond focusing on organic performance metrics:
Demographic information is essential for effective audience targeting, while historical data shows a clear desire by marketers to use past results to predict future success.
It’s clear that influencer marketers are prioritizing a performance-driven approach to creator partnerships. They are choosing creators in the same the way media buyers are choosing audiences—using performance data, not vanity metrics.
metrics
The discovery infrastructure gap
At Superfiliate, we define true creator discovery as more than just identification and sourcing. The missing piece is activation.
That’s why we’ve partnered with Meta to build creator discovery into the Meta Ads Suite the way it should be; bringing together sourcing, authentication, and attribution into one streamlined toolkit for creator-led advertising:
Traditional Creator Discovery
Search fatigue: Marketers are losing hours filtering through databases or lists to find relevant creators.
Compliance risks: Discovery tools using scraped data that violate platform terms of service.
Uncertainty over brand fit: Time-consuming deep dives required to assess creator alignment without scoring systems.
Lack of outreach: Difficulty reaching out to relevant creators.
Fragmented workflows: Difficulty in authenticating and attributing success to creators
Superfiliate Creator Discovery
Reliable, performance-first data: Exclusive Meta first-party insights.
Integrated authentication & outreach: One-click creator connection with Instagram DM capabilities.
AI-powered brand fit scoring: Instant creator-brand alignment assessment.
Historical Partnership Ad data: Access to proven paid performance, not just organic metrics.
Systematic activation workflows: From discovery to campaign launch in days, not weeks.
Explore the ultimate tool for finding and engaging high-performing creators:
How Superfiliate keeps the flywheel turning
With Superfiliate’s Meta Ads Suite, it’s never been easier to surface and activate high-performing creators. Backed by first-party creator data from Meta, we help brands power the flywheel that enables systemic Partnership Ads execution at scale:
- Find and outreach brand-fit creators
- Authenticate their ad accounts in one click
- Launch Partnership Ad campaigns directly inside Superfiliate
- Track campaign performance and double down on top-performing creators
- Use top-performing creators as a blueprint to improve future creator selection
Our findings? Partnership Ads are working for brands. But the tools to manage them are not.
Only 4% are satisfied with their current investment levels. The other 96% see untapped potential, but lack the infrastructure to capture it.
Partnership Ad performance is proven.
But operational bottlenecks are holding brands back from scaling the creator partnerships that are working–or finding others that offer a great fit.
This survey of 24 brands representing over $300 million in ad spend shows the solution to unlocking Partnership Ad spend isn’t simply finding more creators; it’s systems that make the right creators easier to discover, activate, measure, and scale.
So, the next time your CMO or Head of Growth says “We’re not ready to scale Partnership Ads,” show them what’s really getting in their way:
Creator content is the new performance creative.
Partnership Ads consistently outperform studio creative because creators are uniquely positioned to understand their audience. To achieve success at Partnership Ads, influencer marketers need to approach creator partnerships like media buyers, selecting partners based on hard performance data and audience alignment.
It’s not a creative problem. It’s a systems problem.
The best Partnership Ad creative in the world won't scale without the operational infrastructure to support it. Manual discovery and authentication processes that work for a handful of creator partnerships break down at scale, demanding systemic execution.
Effective creator discovery isn’t just sourcing. It’s activation.
Finding creators is one thing; activating them systematically is the competitive moat. True discovery infrastructure integrates discovery, authentication, and performance attribution—dramatically reducing time from creator identification to campaign launch.
Scaling Partnership Ads isn’t about finding more creators. It’s about finding the right ones — and having the infrastructure to unlock the full potential of creator partnerships:
Discovery: Finding creators isn't enough; you need actionable intelligence on Partnership Ad performance, audience alignment, and activation readiness.
Authentication: Each additional creator partnership multiplies authentication friction. Manual processes become expensive bottlenecks.
Attribution: Full performance tracking creates a flywheel—each campaign improves future creator selection.
Discovery: Finding creators isn't enough; you need actionable intelligence on Partnership Ad performance, audience alignment, and activation readiness.
Authentication: Each additional creator partnership multiplies authentication friction. Manual processes become expensive bottlenecks.
Attribution: Full performance tracking creates a flywheel—each campaign improves future creator selection.
And the cycle repeats, preventing brands from scaling Partnership Ads.