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The SITS Girls

The Secret to Success is Support

Behind The Scenes Look At What It Means When You Grant Advertising Access For Your Sponsored Content

· Amy Fulcher

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When creating influencer campaigns, performance benchmarks are used to ensure the brand is getting a good return on its investment. One of the ways those benchmarks can be guaranteed is by creating advertisements that feature your sponsored content. In order to create those advertisements, you may be asked to grant advertising access to the agency or brand. We’re taking a deeper look at exactly what that means so that you can understand what is happening behind the scenes. 

Woman typing on a computer with the words What it means when you grand advertising access for your sponsored content.

What is “adverting access” and what permissions does it grant? 

When you grant advertising access, you are giving a third party permission to create ads on behalf of your Instagram account and/or Facebook page. (You’ll sometimes hear this referred to as “whitelisting,” but we’ll get to why we don’t use that term a little later.) This process is similar to giving someone the role of “Advertiser” on your page. 

Are third-party tools used for creating advertisements from sponsored content? 

Brands and agencies may opt to use a third-party tool for the creation of their ads. Sway (The SITS Girls influencer network) uses Lumanu for this purpose. If needed, you will be invited to authenticate your accounts in the Lumanu platform. That allows the team at Sway to create the ads from sponsored content. It also allows small edits to be made to the copy, such as removing #AD. (#AD would no longer be needed since the advertisement would show as ‘sponsored’ and thus would adhere to FTC disclosure guidelines.) 

You can review the full list of permissions you are granting on the Lumanu website. Permissions can be removed once the campaign is over or set to automatically expire at a certain time. 

What are the differences between boosting a post and granting advertising access? 

Boosting a post is creating an advertisement that is linked to the post you originally created on your Facebook page or in your Instagram feed. When you grant advertising access, a new “unpublished post” (sometimes referred to as a “dark ad,” a term which we are also choosing not to use) is created. These posts do not appear on your page or in your feed. They will only be shown to the people who are the targets of the advertising and they will be labeled as sponsored content. 

Does granting advertising access have a negative impact on your account? 

While people may anecdotally report a dip in their reach after granting access, the research shows that there is no negative effect on an influencer account after ads are created on their behalf. Any changes you may notice in your insights after an ad is created are related to other factors. 

Why don’t you use the terms “whitelisting” and “dark ads?”

While “whitelisting” and “dark ads” may be common in the industry, they associate positivity with “white” and negativity with “black” or “dark.” To avoid those connotations, the use of “advertising access” and “unpublished post” is encouraged. 

Why is advertising your sponsored content necessary? 

Organic reach is declining, and the algorithms are fickle. The need for paid advertising continues to increase every year to ensure that the target audience for each campaign is successfully reached. Creating highly targeted ads allows your sponsored content to be seen by the right people at the right time. That means the brand is happy with a successful campaign, and you continue to get new sponsored content opportunities! 

About Amy Fulcher

Amy is the founder of the creative entertainment website As The Bunny Hops. She loves working with film and television studios like Disney, Nickelodeon, and DreamWorks to create fun DIY projects and recipes to promote their upcoming movies and TV shows. You can follow Amy on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.