What Is A Paid Partnership Label On Instagram?

In recent years, Instagram has become one of the most popular social media platforms – especially for influencer marketing. With over one billion active users, it has become a powerful tool for businesses to reach their target audiences. One of the most effective ways to do this is through paid partnerships.

The goal of paid partnerships is for brands and content creators to work together to promote items in a highly targeted and highly authentic way. Word of mouth marketing is highly effective, and Instagram is the go-to brand referral platform, so understanding how their branded content tools operate is crucial for success.

Paid partnerships come with a few rules to follow in order to participate, but also tons of benefits for brands, influencers, and Instagram users. We’ll break down some of those for everyone involved in an influencer marketing campaign, discuss how eligibility for the tools works, and show what you can do to get a banner.

What Is Instagram’s Paid Partnership Label?

Paid partnerships involve businesses collaborating with influencers or other brands to promote their products or services with compensation. But what actually is a paid partnership on Instagram? A paid partnership is any content that an influencer creates for a brand in exchange for payment. When influencers post such content, also known as sponsored or branded content, Instagram produces a “paid partnership with [brand account]” label for users to see. 

Instagram’s branded content tools have two major objectives. One is that they aim to make partnerships between influencers and businesses stronger and easier to manage on both ends. The other is that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), or the regulatory board for advertising practices, has cracked down on sponsored content transparency and regulates that brands and influencers must disclose which content is sponsored. The lines used to be a bit blurrier when it came to denoting if content had been compensated in some way or not, so this Instagram feature provides a solution for ensuring compliance.

What Are The Benefits Of Paid Partnerships On Instagram?  

Paid partnerships on Instagram offer a wide range of benefits for businesses. From increased reach to improved engagement, cost-effective marketing, and better content, there are many reasons why businesses should consider using paid partnerships on Instagram to promote their products or services. Let’s go through a few boons of the paid partnership feature for brands, influencers, and users.

Here are some advantages of the paid partnership label on the brand side:

• It saves time and clears up communication. Paid partnerships make it easy for brands to streamline the influencer marketing process. Branded content tools allow for easier communication within a partnership and give brands more control over the process when more of it is hosted on Instagram. 
• It provides advanced insights. Brands using paid partnerships get explicit access to influencers’ posting statistics directly from Instagram. These are very valuable when it comes to managing a marketing campaign and can help inform business decisions, especially relating to the ROI of influencer marketing. (Important note: these statistics are only viewable by brands for 14 days after the sponsored post.)
• It’s better exposure. Paid partnership labels directly link to the Instagram account of the brand in question, as opposed to a creator just tagging the business. This means that your business can be promoted in up to four spaces on one post: the paid partnership label, a tag, within the caption of course, and finally, in the comments.
• It’s easier to keep your content on brand. Since companies can approve or disapprove posts before they’re published, they can maintain content alignment on all collateral and make sure that everything stays on brand before it goes out to the world.
• It maintains transparency. Although brands are generally not as well trusted as creators, it’s important for them to denote whether they have an established business relationship with someone or not. This also keeps them FTC- and Instagram-compliant, so obviously a win-win!

Here are some advantages of the paid partnership label on the influencer side:

• It saves time and clears up communication. At first, the paid partnership label only appears when brands manually approve a tag request. However, brands can also create a pre-approved list of content creators to work with. For influencers who primarily work on Instagram, hosting the majority of the communication on their platform of choice simplifies things on their end.
• It establishes credibility. When influencers gain paid partnerships that are officially recognized by the sponsored ‘paid partnership’ banner, it gives them credibility as a creator. It should also make it easier for them to find business partners in the future, as they can show their past work in an authoritative way.
• It maintains transparency. Content creators value the community that they create with their audience. Therefore, it’s important that they maintain a level of transparency by disclosing their sponsored posts. This way, their followers will know when they have a brand deal or are just posting personally and without the intention to influence. 

Finally, here is the big advantage of the paid partnership label on the user side:

• It maintains transparency. Just as the FTC’s updated regulations require, Instagram’s paid partnership label effectively differentiates sponsored posts and ads from grid posts from people that you follow. So, before truly considering if you’d like to buy something or interact with a brand, you can know that it was a marketing push and that the influencer and brand have established some kind of commercial relationship. 

How Do You Add The Paid Partnership Label On Instagram? 

Let’s get specific when we talk about how to add the paid partnership label to your posts on Instagram. For both brands and their influencer partners, the Branded Content tab in Settings is where this all goes down, and you’ll need to be eligible before you can use it.

To add the paid partnership label, you will need to have a professional account (either a business account or a creator account). To turn on branded content, head to your Instagram Settings, and specifically your Business Settings if you’re on a business account. Tap into your Account Tab, and you should see a tab labeled “Branded Branded Content Approvals.” If you’re eligible, that’s all you need. Approval should be set to off, but you can toggle it on to be able to approve posts. You can also swipe the green slider right to enable branded content, and consider swiping on “require approvals” if you’d like to always have the final say before deployment. 

From then on, influencers can add you as their business partner, you will manually approve them, and you can start to approve their incoming tag requests for content. Et voilà, you have officially denoted your paid partnerships!

For influencers to add the paid promotion label, tap on the “Tag Business Partner” field to search for a brand and fill in the partner that you’re working with. They’ll need to approve the request at first, and Instagram will let you know which requests are still awaiting approval. Once they approve you, when you go to create posts, you can tap to add your paid partner to the post in your advanced settings.

P.S. Don’t worry if you forgot to tag your business partner or want to upgrade a post later – you can edit your post and add a business partner afterward right underneath the post!

What Makes Someone Eligible For Branded Content On Instagram?

Before you can start rolling out posts with the paid partnership label or approving creators’ sponsored posts, you should check if you’re eligible for Instagram’s suite of branded content tools. To do so, go to your Instagram settings. Under “Account,” there will be a section labeled Branded Content. Eligible accounts can slide to enable them; ineligible accounts will have to request a review to get their access approved.

Paid partnership eligibility is decided by a few different factors. According to Instagram’s Help Center, brands and creators wanting to use the coveted paid partnerships label must do the following to be eligible:

1. Enable branded content tools (explained above).
2. Follow their Branded Content Policies and Partner Monetization Policies.
3. Remain compliant with their Community Guidelines and Content Monetization Policies.
4. Your brand partner needs to have a professional profile (business or creator) to appear in the search results for branded content partners.

If you’re still struggling to receive your branded content tools eligibility, you can request a review from Instagram to take a look at your account’s status.

How Lionize Can Help With Your Influencer Marketing Strategy 

Paid partnerships are a powerful influencer marketing tool brands and influencers can use to streamline partnerships and provide transparency to campaigns. Ready to take your strategy to the next level this year with paid partnerships? Lionize can help. Our influencer marketing platform helps with the entire influencer marketing process. From finding the right creators to tracking results, our software makes influencer marketing simple. 

Reach out to us today to Book a Discovery Call to learn more.

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