Instagram partnership ads (also known as whitelisting) let you run paid ads and partnership content through your creators' own handles and posts, rather than only your brand account. With Social Snowball, you can request these permissions from your creators and manage them all in one place, which saves you the usual back-and-forth of approvals over DMs. Once a creator approves your request, you're ready to run ads with their content.
This guide walks you through everything you'll need: enabling the feature, requesting access, choosing the right type of permission, and managing your partnership ad relationships as they grow.
Setup
Before you can send any requests, there are two quick steps to enable the feature and connect Instagram through Meta.
Step 1: Reach out to us to enable partnership ads for your account.
Step 2: Head to your Integrations tab and click Reconnect under Instagram. This starts Meta's authentication process, which gives Social Snowball permission to send partnership ad requests on your behalf. Once you've finished, the feature is ready to use.
Requesting partnership ad access
Open the Media tab of your dashboard and click on the piece of content you'd like to use, whether that's for paid ads, collaborations, or something similar. Scroll to the bottom of the content popup and click Request Whitelisting.
Next, choose the type of access you need. Social Snowball supports the two request types that Meta allows, and you can select one or both depending on what you're trying to achieve.
When you're ready, click Send Request. It goes straight to the creator's Instagram account, where they can approve it.
Paid Partnership Tagging
With this option, there's no approval step for the creator. As soon as you send the request, they can add your brand as a sponsored collaborator on their posts. This lets you:
Be tagged with the 'Paid Partnership' label on their posts
Boost tagged posts as sponsored ads
Track the performance of tagged content
On their side, the creator adds your brand as a partner while publishing a post. They first turn on the paid partnership label, then add your brand as the partner, as shown below.
Account-Level Access
This option grants broader content and creation permissions. After you send the request, the creator receives a direct message they can accept. This lets you:
Use their existing posts in your ads
Create new content through their handle
Access audience insights and analytics
On their side, the creator simply sees the request in their Instagram DMs and taps to allow it.
Managing your partnership ads
Once your requests are out, you can keep track of everything in a couple of places.
You can filter your Media tab by Ad Eligibility to quickly find the content that's cleared for ads.
For a complete overview, head to Media > Whitelisting. This table shows every creator who's approved you and lets you manage each relationship in one place. You can filter by access type or paid partnership tagging authorization, and take action on any creator by adjusting their level of access, removing access, or requesting new access.
You can also check a creator's partnership ad status right from their affiliate profile, so you always know exactly what access you have with each one.