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

Welcome back to another episode of DTC Diaries. If you're listening on Spotify I'd recommend you head straight over to YouTube today because we're doing another in-depth training building on what Lucas went up through from a storytelling perspective a few weeks ago. But this time of the focus on third party white listing and partnership ads, a topic that's gained a lot of momentum within meta across our accounts and across the whole DTC ecosystem. It's taking a higher sense to spend month on month 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, besting 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. If 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. So today we're going to be going through unlocking first time impression ratio and incremental reach through partnership and third party white listing ads. By the end of this session, we hope that you'll know why partnership ads and third party position ads and funnels are working have a clear overview of the different type of third party setups that are driving performance on method 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 into Q4. So this is a trade in 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. Permitations of advertising on on meta and Facebook when we first started advertising we were running many different local like audiences super segmented accounts 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 and I think that the 2025 release of meta and drama on drama has really compounded this view that creative is the key variable for performance on matter. What is Andromeda? Well Andromeda is Facebook shift in 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 website shoe. 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 toward probabilistic individual level preference so the ability to review based on signals and its AI context window. So what this brings rise to is 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 the founder story ad whereas I may resonate more with a static image or you'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 so 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 beam conversions at your target CPA. And the ability to grow spend over time by consistently getting in front of new pools of audience and it also brings rise to the at 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 add 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. So 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 brand 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 is 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 a matter providers on a monthly basis and the light blue line is previously 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 points 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 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 points. 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. So we look at non conversion objectives and we're seeing first part third party white listing publisher ads etc as being 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 white listing third party white listing 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 random on Facebook. So I want to touch first on why it works and so the reason partnership in third party ads win under and dromed and the eat within the context that I've just run through is because of the engagements and signal engineering that it provides to the algorithm. So we focus a lot on on this idea of signals and relevancy so how are we creating signals for matter 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 white listing we often see engagement on the ad click through rates row 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. And it's that that kind of mental model that we want to keep central to to all of our creative output like how do we create better signals for for matter to deliver to new audiences over time. Obviously it's also got a really strong authenticity and trust element to it and create a positioning feels like really authentic and real and 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 to an AI platforms where content and the cost of content and the volume of content continues to grow over time. It brings that it 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 comp created diversity and when we see white listing and third party is another variable that acts almost like a multiplier on that so we can we can take each one of those those building blocks and times that by identities and we can see how that gives. Rise to a huge host of of new creative ideas builds more reach and credibility so the increase in signals the increase in relevant score creates better match rate through matters 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 are 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 is is and perhaps a brand that's struggling to to grow incremental reach over time. And the key thing here is that although we're focusing on meta here and the impact of of growing consistently growing first time impression ratio and platform can can be seen across the whole ecosystem as a real trick and trickle down effect if we can broaden this. This top of funnel will drag more new users in they'll trickle down through Facebook or more users will go through your branded PPC ads more sign ups 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 and quite frankly most advertisers haven't adopted yet if you go through 10 to 15 of your favorite brands I bet that less than 50% of them are running strong white listing third party relationship creative. And I think that presents a real opportunity 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. We'll get disproportionate returns the I'll go the algorithm learns and you gain more share of voice if you lean heavily into this idea of of signal engineering and diversity. And 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 our 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 a white listing ads in the meta ecosystem today first is partnership ads. So this is matters new version of branded content and it delivers dynamically to audiences so you'll see you'll have all seen in the in the ads manager this partnership ad selector. These are super easy to set up you can simply search for a creator on on the platform and it will directly send them a request to accept that ad delivery and your your 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 matters algorithm thinks will drive the most 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. Although we can we we we understand that meta it is likely through and robber to 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 assets. We're not able to pull in that creators Instagram audience Facebook audience or any of those elements and dedicate specific amount of spend to their existing and existing audience or users etc. And we can see that as a bit of a limitation. So when setting this up you can see that the you get these identities through. So this is neurodiverse and club neuro and you can select how you want these to display. If if creators maybe are a little bit apprehensive around having the brand associated with them initially. You can limit it to to just your brand or you can as we like to do give that ability to 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 is where we're seeing both brands displayed in partnership and then the second one here is where we're just seeing the. The third party itself showing showing that asset and the different ways that can be displayed there the 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 among the ADHD hacks. And well it this could be ads or any experience so perhaps that's the full funnel maybe it's pre on post click that's run through that identity. But we we love this because it builds a lot of trust and credibility when done correctly so. If 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 that comes across as is very credible very education first. This therefore makes it more of a top of funnel assets and then something that's very product focus 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. The two key like 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 position ads and funnels on behalf of brands. Two two key pros is that it's highly trustworthy and relatable as I mentioned when done correctly if you can get the execution rights really resonates with with net new audiences and can drive amazing unboxing performance. It's free if done internally so you can set these pages up yourself you don't need to work with the third party you can make a page you can make a site very quickly with AI these days and you can. You can put that together to 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 it certainly 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. And obviously is it if you are going to do this in turn is that there's a conch 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 just you just need to be on top of that from from launch. So we're seeing this done obviously through through the example I shared previously but also all different stages of the funnels so this example on screen here is is extra 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 and I think this is a great example of more of an advertorial execution and an adversarial 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 impaired with the right creative this can do it doing 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 Labco is an example of someone who's been doing this really well for years and this advertorial set up when paired with the right native authentic top of funnel creative can be can be super powerful on matter and super powerful on Google PPC we 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 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 work really effective job of building that congruency and alignment with the the search term that the individuals. Looked for initially and therefore driving better conversion rates. Perfect and then the final example on it to touch on which is almost the traditional way of approaching this is the old school white listing in matter so this is running ads through an identity that isn't yours I think big create big celebrities and big influences. This example on the right is heights running from Ben Shepherd and you can see the set up 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 from matter and I they're also planning to sunset this set up in early 2026 and from speaking to our reps we are we know that the signals provided to Andromeda when running through this set of and as great or as impactful as when using the partnership ads. That being said the ability to manually retarget audiences can be quite beneficial if you're working with these big celebrities or people who have. And 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 out with a lot of engagement et cetera et cetera 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 about attention on on partnership ads. So now I want to go through a few examples of what great looks like for for partnership and third party ads currently and I wanted to start with third party positioning the this example on screen from kitchen critic is a is a really strong example of 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 is like a best in class approach. So you can see here that that this brand is is working with kitchen critic which represents a trustworthy name in this niche or ecosystem of dog food. The positioning of this ad as comparison so we bought and serve both brands guess which was art and the puts favorites is comparable and super authentic and you can see this is this is kind of a 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 been affiliated to any brand on the front end and. And 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 positioning were maintaining that unbiased comparable comparable comparable angle in the headline. And you can see how that if you're an individual that's that's engaged and clicked on that ad it's 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 interactive with the ads someone's gone to the presale 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 their dog and it obviously retains the even the image consistency here is great. You can see how that builds that trust that credibility that conviction in users and will lead to really strong conversion rate and this is just a really great example of of that approach across the customer journey. Second is partnership ads so this is taking the example I shared previously and just pulling throughout the funnel so see you can see that partnership positioning neurodiversity and club neuro. The brand is leveraging authentic UGC comment replies is a hook so yeah feels very native feels very organic and then we know from from data that this is a best seller and I think that is key we want to be focusing these top of funnel ads and top of funnel these third party ads on on products that we're giving the that we have data on them having the best chance of success and highest conversion rate so focusing on the best seller. This listicle is a second step then doubles down on that positioning of from the creator so retains that similar but well the same publisher. Show cases 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 consistency in email and full funnel messaging so not just 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 on screen and how that will lead to improve conversion rate with with audiences that come through this touch point. And then thirdly I wanted to touch on the white list ads and show a great example of that which is this Ben Shepherd example from heights. You can see that the identity there this asset is 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 benefits with their product. And I think that's again then pulled through to the product page in a in a way that again retains that congruency and consistency so strong social proof use of the same individuals is in the first touch point and a building on that narrative around his journey with with the products the way he's gone from from one state to another and why others should should look to should look to do the same. A 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 I am a David Beckham 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 amounts of authority based white listing using doctors you nutritionalists experts which is an amazing approach to this and something that that again builds a huge amount of trust and credibility and in a world of increasing in authentic creative through AI. Personal clothing and then view you are a to examples more within the fashion niche that are also worth a look so take a look through these ad libraries build a swipe file and then take them to execute for your brand. So just wanted to end up and by going through a few tactics that other tactics that are really working for us right now and obviously I've touched on some best in clutch class approaches to each of those three setups but. Firstly creating third party pages based on a winning angle or key words so I think that men are pausing mums example previously is it is a great reference point for this if we found a supplement that 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 residents and give us another way to increase diversity of delivery. Secondly and this is a real quick win is using the founders 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 is a really proven way to start this. Revisiting top performing UGC creators and negotiating partnership ads so if you've if you've got a top performing creators over the last 30 days go and speak to them. Pay them for an initial 30 day white listed agreement or partnership agreement test that creative and see how that improves audience delivery I would bet that it drives better CPM and and in 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 amounts of micro mid size influences. Have a look through your seeding database find those who are making the best creative or producing the best assets of the back of that gifting and approach them to work with them on a paid UGC and white listing basis. Creating blog posts and avatorials positioned from the identity we used pre click is a really good way to to build continuity so I shared a few of the example of that in the in the previous slides but once we 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 lining the post click journey with the message or the identity in that add to build that resonance build that congruency. And improve that action rate. Next is I ask yourself which larger influencer celebrity opportunities if you've got the budget align with with my values and product but may allow us to tap into a new audience segment so. I think these engagements often come with with greater cost but I think working with these larger influences who have existing audience or. A lot following our fan base can be a really effective way to to really hark incremental reach obviously comes with greater risk with that cost not everything not every relationship works we've seen that with our brand so I wouldn't jump straight to this point but it can be a really effective way to tap into the 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 that we covered on in previous slides. Expecting outcomes from from this activity is firstly increasing engagement rates on your ads this then should lead to signals to andromeda to prioritize delivery of those of those assets to the 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 that for 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 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 cut. How do we know if it's working and this is how how do we measure this activity I guess we want to be benchmarking cost per unique one that well cost per thousand accounts reached which we look at as a bit of a proxy for incremental reach. CPM types frequency obviously want to be pulling our incremental reach reports if you can get them from your if not we can we can really help with that and 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 white listing and creative production in the right way we should be seeing new visitor percentage and cost per a thousand account reach either stay stable or improve over time depending on your starting point. You 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 looks 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 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 decreasing CAC depending on the volume of spend you're up currently. And yet 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 a campaign or at set level but also on a creator level and can impact your negotiation of fees etc. So yeah just wanted to wrap up with some some final next steps just to give you some like five tangible action points to take away and implement into your brand so. Firstly let's look at I would recommend looking internally first right are there any quick wins you can leverage can we take the founder the team or pages you can create yourself a little or no cost and just inject those into the account with the with the right identity and creative much. Secondly is like identify three of your creators and whether that's already running in the account or relationship you've got and establish the relationship to run the partnership odds or look at how you can create an ad or angle that really aligns with them as an individual to increase that residence. I would look at key word research on on PBC to look at any third party identity to look for any third party identity opportunities and that that can provide both adversarial and meta meta opportunities test and learn so we want to be this is an evolving process we you may not hit it out the park on the on the first try something that you'll need to like like you 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 matter to give you greater much rates and better performance in the future. So yeah thank you for thank you for sticking with me for the last 45 minutes hope that was useful hope this gives you some really ex like tangible 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 will be coming out will be will be bringing more of these educational style formats to the channel and yeah thank you very much for listening hope you have a great rest of the day.