It is no secret by now that influencers can be the most effective way of promoting your brand online. In the past, influencer marketing was limited to only celebrities and a few high-profile bloggers to promote new products and services. However, in recent years, social media marketing has undergone some serious democratization. Nowadays, everyone can become a social media influencer, with followers of all shapes and sizes from every kind of niche community under the sun. Partnering with these influencers – who are well respected in their communities and foster close connections with their followers – can lead to higher brand engagement, and ultimately, more sales or conversions for your business.
In fact, according to a Q3 2023 Sprout Pulse Survey, more than 80 percent of marketers agree that influencers are essential to their overall social media strategy. Whitelisting is one method of leveraging influencer marketing. When you whitelist an influencer, they can allow you to access their social media accounts in order to gain more control over ad placements. By allowing brands to amplify influencer-generated content to a highly targeted audience with trackable analytics, whitelisting provides the best of both worlds of influencer-based and traditional marketing.
Pros of Whitelisting
Whitelisting offers brands much more insight into ad analytics by allowing the brand to access influencers’ social media handles. Some benefits of whitelisting for brands include:
- Enhanced authenticity through influencer voices
- Deeper insight into who views and engages with the influencer’s posts, empowering brands to fine-tune ads to target audiences based on their interests and preferences
- The ability to edit captions and copy of influencer posts to fine-tune messaging
- Extend the shelflife of time-limited posts, such as Instagram stories, which disappear after 24 hours
- The ability to boost specific posts to reach wider audiences
- Increase conversions on partnered content
In contrast to traditional social media ad campaigns that are produced by an in-house team or agency, whitelisting allows brands to use influencer-generated content, which is usually perceived as more authentic by audiences and consequently leads to more conversion rates. It also provides a brand more creative flexibility with the content by allowing brands to edit the copy of captions and other details on posts through access capabilities. Whitelisting can be a highly lucrative
How Does it Work?
To enter an agreement with an influencer to whitelist their account, the brand and the influencer must agree upon the terms of the collaboration. This may include details such as the type of content to be used in promoted advertisements, the duration of the collaboration, and appropriate financial compensation. Once these terms are accepted, the creator will add the brand as a partner, and vice versa.
Whitelisting on Facebook and Instagram
On Facebook, in order to give marketers whitelisting permissions, the creator needs to use Meta Business Portfolio. Brands can use their Facebook Business Manager account to input the influencer’s ID to add them as a Business Partner. Once this request is accepted, marketers can use whitelisting capabilities to:
- Use the ‘inventory filter’ feature to control where your ads appear, including selecting categories or whitelisting specific sites and apps
- Manage and filter comments on posts
- Create strategic dark posts, or targeted ads that are shown to select audiences but don’t appear on the creator’s public feed
- Extend the length of posts to drive long-term results
Instagram also uses Meta Business Portfolio to create and manage ads. This article provides detailed step by step instructions to set up a Meta Business Portfolio and update permissions to whitelist ads for more information.
Whitelisting on TikTok
TikTok does not yet have the same full profile access capabilities of Facebook and Instagram, but offers whitelisting of specific videos with their ‘Spark Ads’ feature. With TikTok Spark Ads, brands can:
- Sponsor organic videos of up to 10 min (in classic advertising, this is limited to 1 minute)
- Use up to 2200 characters in the video description, compared to the 100 characters of classic advertising
- Use hashtags and mention @ people, which is not a feature offered in traditional ads
- Videos in Spark Ads will include a CTA or button that will link to the site or landing page of a brand
What is the Difference Between Whitelisted Ads and Influencer Partnership Ads?
Example of Whitelisting (Left) and Sponsored Ad (Right), Source BlissyBrand
The above graphic shows the difference between influencer-sponsored posts and whitelisted ads. The image on the left is a whitelisted version of the ad run by BlissyBrand, a company that produces silk pillowcases. This ad was posted to the influencer’s profile, and tags the brand to promote the product. On the right, the influencer is featured using the product but is posted to the brand’s social media handle. Whitelisting allows the brand to post IGC directly from the influencer’s handle, leading to a more authentic ad that drives higher engagement.
Whitelisting can also be a very beneficial strategy for influencers to expand their reach and earn revenue. Some of the benefits of whitelisting for influencers include:
- Expanding their audience and gaining new followers through ‘boosted’ ads that reach previously untapped audiences.
- Deeper understanding of performance metrics which can help creators better understand which ads resonate with their audiences for future commercial partnerships.
Types of Whitelisted Content
In-Feed Content
This type of content is pretty self-explanatory: it occurs alongside the organic content an influencer creates. With whitelist capabilities, brands are able to promote or boost posts influencers have already posted. For example, if an influencer already made a post mentioning a product prior to their partnership with the brand, the brand can pay to boost the post to reach audiences beyond the influencer’s followers.
Source: Drunk Elephant
The image above shows an example of organic content that was transformed into sponsored content on TikTok. On TikTok, these ads are called Spark Ads, which are native ad formats that allow brands to leverage old posts from a creator that mention their brand into advertisements. The creator must grant the brand access to the video through a video code on TikTok Ads Manager, which is generated in the app. The creator can also decide how long they will give the brand access to whitelist their content, ranging anywhere from 7 to 365 days. Once the video is converted into a Spark Ad, the brand can track typical analytics such as campaign goals and budgets.
Dark Posts
Dark posts, or dark ads are promotional ads that are only seen by a clearly defined target audience for the campaign. These types of ads allow brands to run certain A/B split tests to test the effectiveness of different permutations of the same ad. For example, a brand might want to see if different visuals, captions, pictures, or CTAs are more effective than others in leading to conversions. By posting these ads as dark posts, brands can run sophisticated analytics without inundating an influencer’s followers with a barrage of repetitive promotional ads.
Cons of Whitelisting
- Time-consuming and cedes control of accounts to brands
- More costly than typical modes of advertising
- Approval flows and access requirements can make this more complicated than running sponsored ads from a brand account
Whitelisting can be time-consuming and costly. Rates for whitelisting range from 50 to 100 percent more than typical rates for basic sponsored posts. This is dependent on the influencer’s follower count – influencers with higher follower counts typically charge higher fees for high-quality content that can reach a broader audience. In addition, the process of establishing access to an influencer’s account can be complicated. At present, whitelisting of entire profiles is only functional on Instagram and Facebook. On TikTok (Spark Ads), brands can only access specific videos the creators give them permission to access.
However, these costs and challenges might pay for themselves in the long run: according to Evan from Your Glow Up Agency, whitelisting can reduce CPA (cost per action) by 20-40 percent, and according to Techreport, influencer whitelisting outperforms traditional social media ads by 20-50 percent.
Potential Considerations for Whitelisting on Social Media
Clear Expectations
Before entering a whitelisting partnership with an influencer, it is important to establish clear expectations to ensure a successful collaboration. In the terms of the agreement, you might want to cover what types of content the influencer will create (i.e. posts, stories, videos), and the frequency and length of these ad campaigns. It’s also important to ensure that the creator understands your key messages and brand voice to ensure alignment with your brand identity.
It can also be helpful to establish some ‘dos and don’ts’ – provide guidelines on what should and should not be included in the content, and mutually agree upon what the influencer feels comfortable with promoting in their feed, and what might be more appropriate for a dark ad. You should also outline any legal obligations in the contract, and set the appropriate financial compensation and schedule for the collaboration (i.e. upfront payments, milestone-based, upon completion).
Establish Trust with Your Partners
The foundation of a successful whitelisting partnership is trust. If an influencer is going to hand you the keys to their proverbial social media castle, they need to know they can trust you not to abuse their influence.
Identify the Right Influencers for Your Ad
The lowest hanging fruit is reaching out to creators who already engage with your product. Perhaps there is an influencer who constantly shouts you out, or there’s a video that’s already going viral that references your product or field of business you can capitalize on. It is also important to consider that the creator is a strong representation of your brand, because the ads will be coming from their account, not yours. Ensure that the collaboration is a good fit – for example, an influencer who commands a young audience primarily interested in video games may not be the best fit if you’re a health supplements brand.
Estimate ROI
It can take some time to see the financial rewards of whitelisting. That’s why it is important to set clear goals on what you hope to achieve from the collaboration. Are you looking to increase brand awareness? Lead generation? Or simply drive conversions, or sales? Be sure to define progress toward these goals, whatever they may be. Identify key performance indicators, such as engagement rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and sales figures.
Common costs of the collaboration can include influencer fees, internal resource costs, and additional expenses related to production, promotion, or platform fees. Once these costs and outcomes are defined, you can compare revenue to total costs to determine your return on investment, or ROI.
