UGC in Meta Ads: How to Use Creator Videos in Partnership Ads

A brand already has a video from a creator — a review, an unboxing, a short product hook — and wants to run it as an ad on Facebook or Instagram, not just as an organic post on the creator's profile. Meta has a dedicated mechanism for this: partnership ads (formerly called branded content ads). It is a separate process from simply uploading a file to Ads Manager, because the material belongs to the creator's account, not the brand's.

Two ways to run a creator's material as an ad

Meta distinguishes two paths. The first is whitelisting/partnership ads from the creator's account — the post, story or reel stays on the creator's profile, but the brand gets limited advertising permissions and runs it as a paid campaign from its own Ads Manager, with its own targeting and budget. We explain the difference between this mechanism and simply buying the file in the glossary: whitelisting.

The second path is an ad from the brand's account: the brand takes the file from the creator and publishes it as its own ad, with no partnership label on the creator's account. Here everything depends on what you agreed in the contract — what the creator consented to, for how long and on which channels. That is the scope we describe in the glossary: usage rights. If the contract only covers publication on the creator's own profile, downloading the file and running it as an ad from the brand's account goes beyond what the creator agreed to.

How to technically turn on partnership ads

Permissions work on two levels, according to the Meta Business Help Center documentation.

Content level — the creator turns on, in the settings of a post, story or reel, an option letting the brand promote that one piece of content, and tags the brand with the paid partnership label. The brand then sees that post in Ads Manager as ready to be turned into a partnership ad. A brand can also run an ad from any of the creator's posts, stories or reels — whether or not it is tagged as partnership content — if the creator shares a special partnership ad code for that specific piece of content.

Account level — through Creator Marketing Hub in Meta Business Suite, the brand sends the creator a request for account-level permissions. Once accepted, the brand can run partnership ads from the creator's content without asking for approval on every single post, including content the creator has not published yet.

In both cases the creator keeps control: permissions can be revoked at any time, the brand never gets access to the account or password, and campaign insights are visible to both sides.

What to settle before you ask for permissions

Before you reach out to a creator about advertising partnership, settle in the brief what is hard to change later without a new conversation:

• which specific pieces of content should go into the ad — one post or every future one;
• how long the permission lasts and whether it expires together with the collaboration;
• whether the brand can edit and trim the material for different ad formats;
• whether you also want the right to publish the material outside Meta — on a website, in an email, in a store. That is no longer a partnership ads question but a matter of usage rights, and needs to be agreed separately.

The brief for the material itself — which versions and hooks are worth ordering before testing them as ads — is covered in our UGC video script guide: a few variants of the first three seconds for different audiences cost less than one well-produced piece of content that was never tested as an ad.

Test before you scale the budget

It is worth checking a creator's material on a small test budget before putting a larger share of the campaign behind it. In Ads Manager you compare the result with what you already know from your own campaigns: CTR, cost per click and, if you track sales through discount codes or UTM, CPA and attributed sales. We describe how to set up that kind of measurement, codes and UTM included, in how to measure the result of a campaign with a creator.

Material that performs well organically on a creator's profile does not have to repeat that performance as an ad — a different context, a different audience, sometimes just a different opening frame is enough to change the result. That is why you test on a small budget instead of shifting a large budget straight onto material that "looked good" organically.

Ad labelling applies regardless of Meta's settings

Meta's partnership settings are a technical mechanism, not a substitute for the labelling required by law. According to the UOKiK recommendations, material where the brand has influence over the content or pays for it needs a clear advertising label — regardless of whether it runs organically or as a paid campaign. The platform's own paid partnership label does not always count as that label on its own: we cover the full rules and example situations in the glossary: labelling advertising.

How this works on Blogger Bank

A task on Blogger Bank can state upfront exactly what permission you need: publication on the creator's profile, partnership ads rights, and whether you also want the material outside Meta. The creator sees the full scope before accepting the task, and the material is approved and settled before payout — payment stays secured until that point. The commission is 5% on the brand's side and 5% on the creator's side.

Create an account and publish a task with a clear scope of rights, or check how Blogger Bank works for brands.