Meta Partnership Ads - Setup, Permissions and Pitfalls
Meta partnership ads (formerly branded content ads) let you run paid ads from a creator's or another brand's handle, out of your own ad account, with both accounts shown in the header and a paid partnership label. You cannot do this without permission. The creator grants it either per post (content-level, usually via an ad code) or once for the whole relationship (account-level, via Partnership Ads Hub).
That single permission choice is the entire job. Everything else is a normal ad.
The two permission types, and which one you actually want
| Content-level | Account-level | |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | One specific post, Reel or Story | Any eligible organic post where your brand appears |
| Granted by | Creator, on the post itself | Creator, by approving a request in Instagram or Facebook |
| Best for | One-off collaborations, test spend | Retainers, affiliates, ongoing creator programmes |
| Ad code needed | Usually yes | No |
| Ongoing friction | A new grant per post | None once approved |
Content-level is the default most people land on, because it is what a creator can do without any prior setup. Account-level is what you want the moment a creator is going to produce more than two or three pieces of content, because it removes a per-post approval that will otherwise stall a campaign at 6pm on a Friday.
Account-level permission covers organic content the creator has published where your brand is attached: a paid partnership label, a mention, a people tag, a product tag, or an Instagram Collab post where you are a co-author. It does not give you the creator's login, their inbox, their followers or their analytics. It is a narrow grant, which is the point.
Set it up: what each side clicks
Meta changes these screens often. If a label below does not match what you see, look for the equivalent wording rather than assuming the feature has gone.
Before you start
Both accounts must be public professional accounts (business or creator) and meet Meta's eligibility rules for partnership ads and branded content. If the creator cannot find the options at all, the usual cause is that branded content tools have never been switched on for their account, under their professional settings.
Account-level: the advertiser's steps
- Open Ads Manager and go to All tools, then Partnership Ads Hub under Advertise.
- Click Add partnership.
- Search for the creator's username and select their account, then click Next.
- Select the account you want to use to partner with the creator.
- Select which of your ad accounts the partnership applies to. Read the next section before you make either of these two choices.
- Send the request.
Account-level: the creator's steps
- Open Instagram, go to the menu on their profile, then their creator or business tools.
- Find Partnership ads, then Ad partners.
- Open pending requests and approve yours.
The creator completes this in the Instagram or Facebook app, under the same menu path. If their accounts are linked, one approval can cover both. If they are working through a marketplace or a creator platform, tapping accept there usually just redirects them to the app to do the real approval, and the status on your side can lag.
Content-level: the ad code route
The creator generates a code on the post. During publishing, or afterwards from the post's three-dot menu, they open the partnership label and ads options and turn on the toggle that produces a partnership ad code. They then copy it or send it to you by direct message.
You take that code into Ads Manager, create the ad as normal, turn on the partnership ad option, paste the code, choose which identities show in the header, and publish.
Two things about codes that catch people out. A code can be used by up to two partners at a time, so if a creator has already given it to two other brands you will be blocked. And on Facebook, unlike Instagram, a code cannot be generated during publishing. The content has to go live first.
The permission level to ask for, and why the maximum is the wrong default
There are two access questions in play, and agencies routinely conflate them.
The creator permission. Ask for account-level, and ask for it once, at the start of the engagement. Do not ask for anything more, because there is nothing more to ask for. Some creators will be nervous, and the honest answer is reassuring: account-level permission lets you promote content they have already published and tagged you in. It does not let you post as them, message as them, or see their private data. They can revoke it.
The client permission, if you are an agency. This is the one where people over-ask. To run partnership ads on a client's behalf you need access to the client's ad account, and the right level is advertiser, not admin. Advertiser gives full campaign control and no payment-method rights. Admin adds billing access and the ability to manage other people's permissions, which you do not need and which gives a cautious client a reason to say no.
There is also a mechanical reason not to go down the individual-user route at all. Adding someone directly to an ad account requires them to have an active Facebook account and to be Facebook friends with you, which is the practical reason to use partner access instead.
So get that access through partner access at the business portfolio level rather than being added as an individual person. The client goes to Settings, then Partners, then adds your agency by business portfolio ID and assigns only the assets you need. Your staff never appear inside their portfolio, so staff churn never becomes the client's problem. The same handshake, in both directions and with the exact click paths for every other platform an agency touches, is in our full guide to client account access for agencies.
Decide deliberately which account and which ad accounts you scope the partnership to
When you send the request, Meta asks you to select the account you are partnering from and which ad accounts the partnership applies to. Those two choices decide where the permission sits and which ad accounts can use the creator's identity. Make the choice deliberately at setup: if you scope it to your agency's account and ad accounts, the relationship follows you when the client leaves; if you scope it to the client's, it stays with them.
Either can be the right answer, but it has to be a decision rather than an accident. If the client is paying for the media and expects to keep the account, scope it to theirs. If you scoped it to yours because that was the account that happened to be selected, you have quietly built something the client cannot easily take with them, and you will find out on the offboarding call. If the terminology here is unfamiliar, or the client does not yet have a portfolio of their own to scope anything to, start with our explainer on Meta business portfolios.
The same logic applies to the ad account itself. If you created the client's ad account inside your portfolio rather than theirs, no partnership ads setup will fix that. Meta publishes no self-serve ownership transfer for ad accounts, so the structure has to be right at creation. Our walkthrough of agency access to a client's Facebook ad account covers how to set that up the way round you can undo.
It is also worth being clear with yourself about what partner access actually buys you, because it is permission and not ownership. The day it is revoked you lose the ad account and its entire campaign history, pixel and dataset access, catalogues, the Instagram inbox and any shared custom audiences, all at once. Export your reporting on a schedule into your own storage, and keep creative and copy in your own systems.
What goes wrong
Turning off an ad code does not stop live ads. Meta's own guidance on ad codes is explicit that switching the toggle off prevents new ads being created, while ads already running with that code keep running. Meta has a separate flow for stopping an advertiser from running partnership ads from your account, so check what it does before you promise a creator a kill switch. Either way, plan for a wind-down conversation rather than a single button, and if a creator relationship ends badly, agree in writing who pauses what and by when.
Archiving does not revoke. A creator archiving a post on Instagram does not remove an advertiser's ad code access to it. Creators assume it does.
Permission is not a content licence. The platform grant lets you run the ad. It says nothing about how long you may use the footage, whether you can cut it into other creatives, or whether you can use it off-platform. That is a contract, and if you have not written one, you do not have one.
Formats differ between Facebook and Instagram. Facebook partnership ads are limited to a narrower set of formats than Instagram, and the code generation flow differs as described above. Do not promise a client a Story-format partnership ad on Facebook without checking it first.
The creator quietly deletes the post. Content-level permission attached to a deleted post takes the ad with it. Another argument for account-level plus your own copy of the raw files.
Nobody logs who approved what. Six creators in, across three clients, nobody can tell you which permissions are live. Keep the record on your side. In Inflowave, each client sits in an isolated workspace, so creator approvals, contacts and conversations for that client stay in one place rather than in someone's direct messages. Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp conversations land in a single inbox, which is generally where creator negotiations actually happen.
FAQ
Are partnership ads the same as branded content ads?
Yes. Meta renamed branded content ads to partnership ads. Older guides and some third-party tools still use the previous name.
Is this the same as allowlisting or whitelisting?
Broadly, yes. Allowlisting and whitelisting are the industry terms for what Meta now implements as partnership ad permissions. There is no separate whitelisting feature to find.
Do I need the creator's password?
No. If anyone suggests sharing a login, that is the wrong route and it breaks Meta's model. All of this works on permissions.
Can I run partnership ads with another brand rather than a creator?
Yes. The mechanism supports business partners as well as creators, so long as both accounts are eligible professional accounts.
Who pays and who is billed?
Whoever owns the ad account the campaign runs in. The creator is not billed and does not need a payment method.
Can the creator see how the ads perform?
The creator does not get your Ads Manager reporting. If you want them to see results, you send them results.
What if the client's ad account is restricted?
Then partnership ads are not the problem you are solving today. A restricted ad account cannot run them either, so get the restriction resolved with Meta first and come back to the creator setup afterwards.
How long does a creator's permission last?
Account-level permission stays until it is revoked. Content-level ad codes are per-post, and a creator can archive a code or generate a new one at any time, so confirm the code you were given is still active before you build a long schedule around it.
Meta's own reference pages: about partnership ad permissions, account-level permissions, content-level permissions and creating a partnership ad code.
