How To Run Partnership Ads on Meta Like The Top 1%

0:28Welcome back to another episode of DTC Diaries. for the brands that we work with. Partnership ads are a great way to ensure that you're reaching new audience. And the session I'm going to go through for the next 30 to 45 minutes is one that we run with our internal team on best practices, the different types of partnership ads, best in class examples, and how you can get started today implementing these approaches into your brand through Q4 to help you grow, spend, acquire more customers, and be more profitable. We put out a partnership ad resource a few weeks ago. We'll leave that in the description below.

1:05If anyone's got any further requests for future trainings, deep dives, educational videos, please let us know in the comments and like and subscribe. The more people we get, the more feedback we get on these videos, the more it motivates us to put out more content that helps you guys grow your brand. So yeah, without further ado, let's get into the video.

1:32So today we're going to be going through unlocking first-time impression ratio and incremental reach through partnership and third-party whitelisting ads. By the end of this session we hope that you'll know why partnership ads and third-party positioned ads and funnels are working, have a clear overview of the different type of third-party setups that are driving performance on Meta today and how we can take advantage to drive stronger incrementality and reach net new audiences for your brand and then towards the end we've got some really clear action points that we think everybody who's watching this video should take and get started from today to drive performance into Q4.

2:16So this is a training session that we did with our team recently and I wanted to start by just I guess setting the scene and giving a view of how we've seen the market on Meta shift over the last 12 to 18 months. So we've as a business saw with us we've been around since 2019 we've seen many different permutations of advertising on Meta and Facebook. When we first started advertising, we were running many different lookalike audiences, super segmented account structure. We then saw iOS 14 and the chaos that that brought. And then over the last couple of years, we've seen this move to a creative first approach to targeting.

3:00And I think that the 2025 release of Meta Andromeda has really compounded this view that creative is the key variable for performance on Meta. What is Andromeda? Well, Andromeda is Facebook's shift in the way it serves ads to individuals on the platforms that it owns. It's a move from deterministic to probabilistic. What this means simply is a move away from grouping you as an individual with other similar people based on purchase behavior based on consumption of content based on the websites you you browse so no longer looking at things like look-alike audiences and interest audiences which have been gradually sunset over time and a move towards probabilistic individual level preference so the ability to review based on signals and its AI context window.

4:07So what this brings rise to is this idea that Meta can now support a far greater volume of ads on a weekly and monthly basis and is much more effective at delivering those ads to individuals that may resonate with them based on their characteristics. So perhaps you watching resonate more with a founder story ad whereas I may resonate more with a static image ad or you're We're at the first touchpoint with a brand and I'm at the fourth touchpoint and it's able to to utilize context to better serve the inventory that we provide it. This obviously gives rise to this idea that creative and or creator slash identity is the new targeting.

4:51so we want to be focusing on this mental model for are we providing the right inputs to this algorithm in order to set us up for success success being conversions at your target cpa and the ability to grow spend over time by consistently getting in front of new pools of audience um it also brings rise to the soulmate theory the idea that there is in fact a perfect creative for each user it's just can we make that creative for your brand and as a result of this we are focusing heavily on supplying the algorithm with a high volume and variety of assets the key is that we retain quality whilst we're doing this and we audit a number of brands on a monthly basis that are increasing ad output month on month but CPA is either increasing as they spend more or they're not able to grow spend without efficiency declining and profitability declining.

5:58So quality is key but volume and variety is what is allowing us to grow spend month on month for brands whilst retaining that. One of the biggest problems we see is declining first-time impression ratio as a brand scales. Especially for brands spending multi-six figures per month on platform, we see that if they're not tracking and keeping first-time impression ratio or incremental reach as a KPI within their reporting, this will naturally decline over time. So we really want to use this as a KPI for, and it's almost like a leading indicator of future performance. So on the left here, you'll see a incremental reach report that our amazing reps over at Meta provide us on a monthly basis.

6:46And the light blue line is previously reached individuals. The turquoise green line at the top is net new incremental reach on a weekly rolling basis. and then this percentage is the absolute percentage of impressions that were truly incremental for this brand in that period. Obviously not every previously reached individual is someone who's at the point of being ready to convert. We know that we're going to need to get in front of people four to five times often to drive purchase with a variety of different content formats and messaging and therefore we don't want we're not worried if this isn't 50 60 70 but we need this to be between 10 and 20 on a monthly basis to be confident that we're filling the funnel with audience that is going to convert at a later point if if we're below that benchmark the first tactic we look at is creative so messaging format angles creator and identity diversity and only after this has been exhausted do we look at non-conversion objectives and we're seeing first party third party whitelisting publisher ads etc has been a real hack for quick wins in growing incremental reach across our account portfolio currently ahead of q4 and over the next few slides we're going to dive into how the different types of whitelisting third-party whitelisting and how to really do this through a best-in-class approach to allow you to continuously unlock this incremental reach and avoid growth slowing down as you scale your brand on Facebook.

8:38So I wanted to touch first on why it works. So the reason partnership and third-party ads win under Andromeda and within the context that I've just ran through is because of the engagement and signal engineering that it provides to the algorithm so we focus a lot on on on this idea of of signals and relevancy so how are we creating signals for meta to get an understanding of how relevant an ad is to an audience and further boost delivery to people who are interested in that piece of content and likely to convert. So when we use third-party whitelisting, we often see engagement on the ad, click-through rates grow, and therefore this acts as a signal to Facebook to shift and improve that delivery to people who are most likely to convert through that asset.

9:41And it's that kind of mental model that we want to keep central to all of our creative output. but how do we create better signals for Meta to deliver to new audiences over time? Obviously, it's also got a really strong authenticity and trust element to it. Creator positioning feels really authentic and real, whether that's internal, whether that's third party, or whether that's just creators in general. And I think this is something that's going to continue to evolve with the rise of Sora 2 and AI platforms where content and the cost of content and the volume of content continues to grow over time.

10:23It brings another layer to creative diversity. So we see creative diversity almost as a pyramid where you've got angle and message at the bottom, you've got format, vehicle, so whether that's a high production UGC static and then whether it's a podcast art, it's a VSL, you can see these building blocks of creative diversity and we see whitelisting and third party is another variable that acts almost like a multiplier on that. So we can take each one of those building blocks and times that by identities and we can see how that gives rise to a huge host of new creative ideas, builds more reach and credibility.

11:10So the increase in signals the increase in relevance score creates better match rate through meta's algorithm which allows us to get in front of new audiences that we may not have reached before with a message that really resonates them with them on that first touch point so prior to this is kind of a view of of how we see the funnel and how we think about first time impressions so the before state on the left is perhaps a brand that's struggling to grow incremental reach over time. And the key thing here is that although we're focusing on meta here, the impact of consistently growing first-time impression ratio on platform can be seen across the whole ecosystem.

11:57It has a real trickle-down effect if we can broaden this this top of funnel and we'll drag more new users in they'll trickle down through Facebook they'll more users will go through your branded PPC ads more signups through CRM and ultimately there'll be a greater volume of individuals converting at the bottom of that funnel if we can consistently increase the first time impression ratio and get in front of new audiences with ads that are relevant to them and that drive conversion. So why now is the time to act? Quite frankly most advertisers haven't adopted yet. If you go through 10 to 15 of your favourite brands I'd bet that less than 50 % of them are running strong whitelisting third-party relationship created and i think that presents a real opportunity um those that maximize first time impression ratio and i guess maximize those signals to andromeda create a future power law early adopters to this mental model of of how to get the best out of facebook today or meta today will get disproportionate returns the algo the algorithm learns and you gain more share of voice if you lean heavily into this idea of signal engineering and diversity.

13:23And the top 10 % of advertisers will capture the majority of impressions. We've seen this with some of our fastest growing brands where we are producing the highest volume of diverse creative. It feels like we're pushing a snowball down a hill rather than sort of fighting for growth and future conversions. And I think that's the compounding impact of leaning into Andromeda and leaning into the algorithm. So I wanted to touch on the key ways to execute. So we've got three different types of third party or whitelisting ads in the Meta ecosystem today. First is partnership ads. So this is Meta's new version of branded content and it delivers dynamically to audiences.

14:10So you'll have all seen in the ads manager, this partnership ad selector. These are super easy to set up. You can simply search for a creator on the platform and it will directly send them a request to accept that ad delivery and you're away. It's a super simple setup. and you can also set up dynamic delivery depending on expected action rates so these ads will dynamically deliver from either the brand handle the creator handle or a combination of both depending on what Meta's algorithm thinks will drive the best action rate from that audience and that's again another variable of diversity if we're giving that power to Meta to make that decision for us cons of this delivery type is that the partner needs to accept the request which i think is relatively low friction but the second is that we cannot manually retarget the audience so um although we can we we understand that meta is likely through andromeda not every impression on that ad is going to be net new and we're probably retargeting some of the people who see that piece of creative initially multiple times with the same asset we're not able to pull in that creator's instagram audience facebook audience or any of those elements and dedicate a specific amount of spend to their existing um existing or audience or users etc and we can see that as a bit of a limitation um so when setting this up you can see that the you get these the identities through so So this is Neurodiverse and Club Neuro.

16:02You can select how you want these to display. If creators maybe are a little bit apprehensive around having the brand associated with them initially, you can limit it to just your brand. Or you can, as we like to do, give that ability to meta, to select and deliver based on what it thinks will generate the best return from the users that it's putting this creative in front of to drive better performance and this is a couple of examples of how that looks on the feed so you can see this first first screenshot at the top um is where we're seeing both brands uh displayed in partnership and then the second one here is where we're just seeing the brand it's the um the third party itself showing that asset and the different ways it can be displayed there.

16:56The second format of third-party delivery is third-party positioning. So this is running ads through a third-party identity. You can see one on screen here, which is Amanda ADHD hacks. And, well, this could be ads or any experience, so perhaps that's the full funnel. Maybe it's pre - and post-click that's run through that identity. But we love this because it builds a lot of trust and credibility when done correctly. So you can see this example on screen is focused on a specific problem and persona. So focus and ADHD. And the asset here is super raw, authentic UGC that comes across as very credible, very education first.

17:45and this therefore makes it more of a top of funnel asset than something that's very product focused that's very direct and that authenticity and credibility builds signals and resonance with the audience which helps with further top of funnel delivery through Andromeda. Two key ways we like to think about this internally is through the lens of a persona so menopausal mums being one or through the lens of a credible positioning or credible third parties so styling tips or as I've mentioned here my subscription addiction which is a publisher that offers third party positioned ads and funnels on behalf of brands.

18:34Two key pros is that it's highly trustworthy and relatable as I've mentioned when done correctly if you can get the execution right really resonates with net new audiences and can drive amazing unlocks in performance. It's free if done internally. So you can set these pages up yourself. You don't need to work with a third party. You can make a page, you can make a site very quickly with AI these days. And you can put that together in a way that allows you to then create assets from a completely different positioning and send that traffic either to your site or through a funnel. cons are it requires the identity creating if you are going down that route obviously that takes time and resource if you aren't using internal resource it can be publishing externally like my subscription addiction can be expensive i'd encourage everybody watching to go and have a look at their ad library because it provides great reference points if you are going to do it internally on how to do creative well when doing it through a third party how to do funnels well when doing it through a third party.

19:37And obviously, if you are going to do this internally, there's a community management requirement and expectation, and that needs to be considered. You're going to need to manage comments, manage website engagement that lives in a separate ecosystem, and you just need to be on top of that from launch. So we're seeing this done, obviously, through the example I shared previously, but also at all different stages of the funnel. So this example on screen here is Exeter that's doing it through a comparison to a competitor. And this is going more after that sort of solution-aware stage or product-aware stage.

20:19And I think this is a great example of more of an advertorial execution. An advertorial positioning provides a hugely diverse range of options. So this doesn't always have to be very transactional. You can do it through the lens of answering a question, educating an audience who have a specific problem, going after a previous failed solution, going after a really common objection, going after comparisons to other competitors' products. and when done correctly and paired with the right creative this can do it do an amazing job of education and warming audience up and bringing new people into a funnel without directing them straight to a product page pet lab co is an example of someone who's been doing this really well for for years and this advertorial setup when paired with the right native authentic top of Funnel Creative can be super powerful on Meta and super powerful on Google PPC.

21:25We see this being used really effectively by, and we're using this really effectively across a number of brands to target long tail search terms. So maybe we're targeting someone's search like top five memory supplements or best memory supplements and we're positioning a or brands are positioning an article like this and then their products will be will be top obviously and the most recommended of the of the five here and that does really what a really effective job of building that congruency and alignment with the the search term that that the individuals looked for initially and therefore driving better conversion rates.

22:10Perfect. And then the final example I wanted to touch on, which is almost the traditional way of approaching this is the old school whitelisting in Meta. So this is running ads through an identity that isn't yours. I think big celebrities and big influences. This example on the right is Heights running from Ben Shepard. And you can see the setup here, you have to go and get access to their assets. It's much more complex than the newly formed partnership ads, hub and ecosystem from Meta. And they're also planning to sunset this setup in early 2026. And from speaking to our reps, we know that the signals provided to Andromeda when running through this setup aren't as great or as impactful as when using the partnership ads.

23:02that being said the ability to manually retarget audiences can be quite beneficial if you're working with these big celebrities or people who have a large following of of engaged users that you maybe want to lean into with a specific spend and specific allocated budget to maybe to prime that ad with a lot of engagement etc etc so we do think they can still be used well when when when used intentionally but they are they are being sunset into 2026 so we want to be focusing most of our attention on on partnership ads so now i want to go through a few examples of of what great looks like for for partnership and third-party ads currently um i wanted to start with third-party positioning.

23:56This example on screen from Kitchen Critic is a really strong example of how to execute this third-party positioning throughout the funnel, throughout the customer journey. And I think that congruency and consistency is something that we see as like a best-in-class approach. So you can see here that this brand is working with Kitchen Critic, which represents a trustworthy name in this niche or ecosystem of dog food the positioning of this ad um as comparison so we bought and served both brands guess which was our and the pup's favorite is is comparable and super authentic and you can see this this is kind of i really like this hack at the bottom where it's they've kind of redacted the name here in the in the headline to double down on that feeling of not being affiliated to any brand on the front end and again build that authenticity that credibility that then allows you to to leverage that further through the customer journey you can then see that when looking at the funnel they they maintain this identity and consistency throughout the journey so we're retaining the the positioning we're maintaining meaning that unbiased comparable angle in the headline.

25:23And you can see how that, if you're an individual that's engaged and clicked on that ad, it's continuing that narrative and that consistency on the next step to the customer journey. And then it's pushing to the sales page as a second step, a post-qualification destination of the product page. This is a sales-based landing page. and at this point if someone's if someone's interacted with the ads someone's gone to the pre-sale page and further educated themselves on the benefits of the product how it compares to others in the market and why it is the best for for their dog and it obviously retains the um even the image consistency here is great you can see how that builds that trust that credibility that conviction in users and and will lead to really strong conversion rate and this is a just a really great example of that approach across the customer journey.

26:23Second is partnership ads. So this is taking the example I shared previously and just pulling throughout the funnel. So yeah, you can see that partnership positioning, neurodiversity and club neuro. The brand is leveraging authentic UGC comment replies as a hook. So yeah, it feels very native feels very organic and then we know from from data that this is a bestseller and i think that is key we want to be focusing these top of funnel ads and top of funnel um these these third-party ads on on products that uh that we're giving them that we have data on them having the best chance of success and highest conversion rate so focusing on a bestseller um this listicle as a second step then doubles down on that positioning of from the creator so retains that that similar well the same publisher um showcases the benefits of the product and the narrative and the story behind the product and then that continues to the lower funnel conversion ready funnel of the product page where we've got the consistent product journey and then a final step here which which we love is the the consistency in in email and full funnel messaging so not just the the pre-step page but also the crm activity which continues to double down on that persona and continues to double down on that creator's message to the audience that that came into contact with the brand through that through that funnel and again you can see that consistency see on screen and how that will lead to improved conversion rate with audiences that come through this touchpoint.

28:09And then thirdly, I wanted to touch on the whitelist ads and show a great example of that, which is this Ben Shepard example from Heights. You can see that the identity there, this asset is done through the lens of storytelling about Ben's experience with the products and how he's gone from a before state to an after state how he's gone from a position of pain to a position of of outcome and and benefits with with their product um and i think that's again then pulled through to the product page in a in a in a way that again retains that congruency and consistency so strong social proof use of the same individual as is in the first touch point and a building on that narrative around his journey with the products, the way he's gone from one state to another and why others should look to do the same.

29:11A few of the best-in-class examples to have a look at in the ad library. I mentioned Pet Lab Co., Space Goods, Trip, Mindful Chef, Heights, IM8, David Beckham's supplement brand. We've done a breakdown of their funnel in a previous podcast episode. Please go back and watch it. You can download the resource there. They're doing a huge amount of authority-based whitelisting using doctors, nutritionalists, experts, which is an amazing approach to this and something that, again, builds a huge amount of trust and credibility in a world of increasing inauthentic creative through AI. Percival Clothing and then Viewory are two examples more within the fashion niche that are also worth a look.

30:00So take a look through these ad libraries, build a swipe file and then take them to execute for your brand. So I just wanted to end by going through a few tactics, other tactics that are really working for us right now. Obviously, I've touched on some best in class approaches to each of those three setups. But firstly, creating third party pages based on a winning angle or keyword. So I think that menopausal mums example previously is a great reference point for this. If we found a supplement and we know that that's our core angle within our winning creative, taking that, making a third party page and doubling down on that approach to improve resonance and give us another way to increase diversity of delivery.

30:50Secondly, and this is a real quick win, is using the founder's profile for founder story ads or any other internal team members or personas. So we're seeing this work for teams. It could be a behind the scenes. It could be an internal authority and an expert. Say you've got a nutritionalist as part of your team. using their using their identity and creating almost a creative strategy around that person separate to the creative strategy around the brand is a way to continue to diversify delivery over time and obviously the founders is a really proven way to to start this revisiting top performing UGC creators and negotiating partnership ads.

31:39So if you've got top performing creators over the last 30 days, go and speak to them, pay them for an initial 30 day whitelisting agreement or partnership ad agreement, test that creative and see how that improves audience delivery. I would bet that it drives better CPM and better first time impression ratio just by doing that as a next step. If you've got an existing seeding program, so say you're seeding products on a monthly basis to X amount of micro midsize influencers, have a look through your seeding database, find those who are making the best creative or producing the best assets off the back of that gifting and approach them to work with them on a paid UGC and whitelisting basis.

32:29Creating blog posts and advertorials positioned from the identity we used pre-click is a really good way to build continuity. So I shared a few of those, an example of that in the previous slides. But once we've found a winning asset, we don't want to stop there. We want to look at how do we compound the impact of that by aligning the post-click journey with the message or the identity in that ad to build that resonance, build that congruency and improve that action rate. Next is ask yourself, which larger influencer celebrity opportunities, if you've got the budget, align with my values and product but may allow us to tap into a new audience segment?

33:13So I think these engagements often come with greater cost, But I think working with these larger influencers who have existing audience or a large following or fan base can be a really effective way to really hack incremental reach. Obviously, it comes with greater risk with that cost. Not every relationship works. We've seen that with our brands. So I wouldn't jump straight to this point, but it can be a really effective way to tap into new audience segments. And then finally, doing intentional keyword research on PPC and Google to come up with third party identity opportunities. Maybe that's based around longer tail searches, problem statements, comparative statements, etc.

34:01that we covered in previous slides. Expecting outcomes from this activity is firstly an increasing engagement rates on your ads. This then should lead to signals to Andromeda to prioritize delivery of those assets to the audience segment that's resonating with the piece of creative or funnel. That increases your ad relevancy scores and your match rate off the back of that, which leads to a greater total addressable audience on an asset level. that in turn drives better first time impression ratio for the on an asset level and then on an account level and that funnel then captures more users and grows your audience over time and ultimately that leads to to greater volume of conversions at bottom of funnel so that's that's kind of a flow through of how the right approach to third-party asset production can lead to the outcome that we all want, which is greater spend, greater conversion at your target CAC.

35:14How do we know if it's working? And this is how do we measure this activity, I guess. We want to be benchmarking cost per unique, well cost per thousand accounts reached, which we look at as a bit of a proxy for incremental reach, CPM times frequency. Obviously we want to be pulling our incremental reach reports if you can get them from your rep if not we can we can really help with that we want to be keeping an eye on net new visitor percentage on both an asset campaign and at account level i think if you're if you are approaching creative diversity and then as a part of that third party uh whitelisting and creative production in the right way we should be seeing new visitor percentage and cost per 1000 account reach either stay stable or improve over time depending on your starting point.

36:08You can also do a qualitative review of audience so look at the audience for your third-party assets and ask yourself like does it look different to that of the rest of my ecosystem. If you're seeing CPA look strong and audience delivery look quite different that is a good thing we want that is a signal that we're reaching new people maybe that's a different age group maybe that's a different gender or a function of the two of those so yeah you want to be reviewing assets and specific relationships on an audience level and if you're if you're doing this right on an asset level we should then see overall account level incremental reach frequency and CPM improve and ultimately we should be able to increase spend a stable or decrease in CAC depending on the volume of spend you're at currently and yeah I think it's really important to review CAC versus CPA on an identity level some of these assets and some of these third-party relations can prove to be more incremental than than others and that needs to be factored into your attribution and your targets, not just at a campaign or ad set level, but also on a creator level and can impact your negotiation of fees, et cetera.

37:29So yeah, just wanted to wrap up with some final next steps just to give you some like five tangible action points to take away and implement into your brand. So firstly, I would recommend looking internally first. Are there any quick wins you can leverage? Can we take the founder, the team or pages you can create yourself for little or no cost and just inject those into the ad account with the with the right identity and creative match secondly is like identify three of your creators whether that's already running in the account or relationships that you've got and establish the relationship to run the partnership ads or look at how you can create an ad or angle that really um aligns with them as an individual to increase that resonance i would look at key keyword research on on ppc uh to look at any third party identity to look for any third party identity opportunities um and that that can provide both advertorial and and meta meta opportunities test and learn so we want to be this is an evolving process we you may not hit it out of park on the on the first first try it's something that you'll need to like like your general creative process test learn and iterate on and take learnings on and drive feedback across that process over time and then finally as I mentioned previously the work doesn't stop when you found a winning asset like look at how you can create post-click experiences around those top performing identities as a next step that will increase conversion rates which will provide more signals better signals to meta to give you greater match rates and better performance in the future so yeah thank you for thank you for sticking with me for the last 45 minutes uh hope that was useful hope this gives you some really ex like tangible um steps of how you can get started with third party delivery in order to drive performance now and in the future for your brand please if you enjoyed this do like and subscribe we'll be coming out we'll be we'll be bringing more of these educational style formats to the channel and yeah thank you very much for for listening hope you have a great rest of the day