Instagram Rebrands Branded Content Ads to Partnership Ads to Support More Partnership Use Cases

Source: Instagram

Instagram is rebranding Branded Content Ads as Partnership Ads. It's more than a rebrand though as Instagram is also expanding the functionality of these ads.

With Partnership Ads, brands will retain the ability to amplify content from creators and partners using the Paid Partnership label, as they did with Branded Content Ads. However, Instagram is now broadening its support for various partnership types. Brands can amplify content from Collabs posts, @mentions, people tags, product tags, and other content that doesn’t require the Paid Partnership Label.

Source: Instagram

Instagram is also refreshing permissions to support these different use cases. Partners can give advertisers post-level or account-level permissions

This move reflects a change in how brands view creator partnerships. While traditional creator-brand collaborations, where creators produce sponsored content based on campaign briefs, are still core, there is a wealth of valuable organic content featuring brands, products, and services. In many cases, this true user-generated content (UGC) proves more valuable than content produced through influencer marketing campaigns.

By enabling brands to amplify such content without the need for the Paid Partnership label (with user permission), it offers an alternative approach to partnering with creators and everyday social media users (and other brands as well) beyond the confines of traditional influencer marketing campaigns.

This move also underscores the growing importance of both organic and paid media strategies on social media. Given the constant algorithmic evolution, allocating a budget to amplify organic content helps brands reach wider and more relevant audiences at scale. Additionally, a paid media strategy that includes boosting content from creators and partners alongside traditional brand ads yields higher performance metrics on Instagram, such as a 53% higher click-through rate, 19% lower cost per action, and a 99% probability of outperforming regular ads alone.