Podcast Summary: Marketing Operators

Episode: How We're Reaching New Audiences on Meta with Partnership Ads

Hosts: Connor Rolain, Connor MacDonald, Cody Plofker
Special Guests/Contributors: Matt, Aaron Orndorff (lurking)
Date: September 16, 2025

Episode Overview

In this episode, the Marketing Operators team dives deep into how fast-growing DTC brands are expanding their Meta (Facebook/Instagram) advertising beyond the basics—specifically, through partnership (whitelisting) ads and influencer collaborations. The discussion explores the strategic rationale for targeting new audiences, how creator and partnership ads fundamentally change paid media, methods for signal engineering to "shock" algorithms, and performance insights from running large-scale influencer and creative campaigns. There’s also an in-depth look at running high-stakes sweepstakes (with examples from Ridge and Hexclad), creative testing, and strategies for unlocking incremental growth.

Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Next Phase of Growth: Beyond Basic Meta Ads

• Brands max out with “general” Meta ads; targeting new personas is key to the next growth stage.
  • "A lot of brands can get from 0 to 5 just on like great product, general ads and meta. But at some point you really need to start to target different Personas to tap into that next phase of growth." – Matt [00:00]
• Strategic intent now involves targeting tangential or entirely new verticals and personas, sometimes via influencer partnerships well outside the core product audience.
• Example: Cooking brands pursuing partnerships in fashion or sports, and beauty brands targeting parenting and wellness influencers rather than just beauty creators.

2. The Role of Creators & Influencer Marketing in Meta's Ecosystem

• Creator as targeting: Not just creative, but who the creator is, increasingly acts as a targeting lever in Meta’s ad system.
  • "Everyone says creative as a targeting. I also think creator is a targeting and meta is being, you know, transparent about that now that like partnership ads that are using the page signal." – Cody [00:10]
• Partnership ads are outperforming: Both large and small creators are being used for pay-to-play content distribution. Native distribution on their channels is limited in direct response, but the bigger value is often in whitelisting for paid amplification.
• Investment is shifting up market: Macro-influencer deals are increasingly justified as "buying a data signal," similar to lists in the pre-iOS14 days.

3. Mechanics & Economics of Influencer Partnerships

• Distribution value vs. ad value: Organic influencer posts rarely hit break-even CPA; most value is from paid rights (whitelisting/partnership ads).
  • "We've gotten what I would say is very little value in the distribution...I think largely the majority of the work is more on the asset and the whitelisting." – Cody [11:54]
• Pricing is variable—negotiation and agency relationships are key. Ballpark: $4-8K/month for creators with ~3M followers for post + partnership ad rights. Large YouTubers command $50K+ for short-term integrations [see: Connor's examples at 13:58].
• Gifting (product seeding) finds small, native creators for cheap content generation. 1 in 50 or 1 in 100 delivers solid paid social creative, but that one can be extremely efficient.
  • "But also what we do all the time is...we pay them per video, but we're talking about paying them like 100 or 200 bucks, really small amounts of money largely for content. And then we'll get access to their pages to run partnership ads." – Connor [18:49]

4. Partnership Ads vs. Whitelisting: Which Performs Better?

• Meta is pushing partnership ads as the future—whitelisting is being deprecated ("sunset in all but name").
  • "Meta never officially sunsets products, but they're really trying to move—sunset whitelisting and just kind of have partnership be the main hub...And especially with them now allowing you to run partnership ads just from the creator's handle—that essentially is whitelisting." – Cody [24:16]
• Single-handle partnership ads (from creator only, not brand + creator) appear less like ads and often perform better on Meta.
  • "I don't think there's any value in having the brand handle attached to it, frankly. I think it looks more like an ad and I think a lot of the value of partnership ads is they look less like ads." – Connor [26:36]

5. Signal Engineering & Reaching New Audiences

• How do you know you’ve reached a new audience on Meta? Look for significant changes in age/gender/placements/engagement vs. account averages.
  • "You go and look just at the impressions on these ads and it's like not that different cpm, but the audience is like way skewed towards one gender compared to account average. The placements are totally different, the engagement looks different." – Matt [27:14]
• Partnership ads with new creators can pass new “signals” to Meta's algorithm, which in turn can benefit other ads and expand the overall buying pool.
  • "I fundamentally believe that...when we launched linear tv...no other change but you know, putting 10% of our mix into, into a new channel with completely new audience, Meta performance just significantly improved..." – Cody [28:59]
• Higher incrementality on partnership ads confirmed via holdout/lift tests ([30:05]).

6. Approaches to Creative, Product, and Persona Expansion

• Creative "shock therapy": If Meta's algorithm gets stuck on a historic demo, creative differentiation (new personas, products, angles, partnerships) is required to unlock new conversion pools.
• Category vs. colorway expansion: New product categories yield new customers via new acquisition funnels; mature brands find incremental growth via bold new colorways/designs/angles that attract attention and refresh sales (see Ridge's collaborative designs).
  • "If we list out our biggest wins over the last few years, it comes from more dynamic designs, more exciting designs." – Connor [39:03]
• Ads promoting niche or bolder SKUs can sometimes drive engagement that closes on classic colors/products, not just the feature item (i.e. “lure and close”).

7. Incrementality, Attribution, and Budgeting for Influencer/Partnership Efforts

• Most revenue from influencer programs does NOT show up as organic attribution. Paid whitelisting/partnership is the primary lever.
• Best practice is to allocate a % of media budget (e.g. 1-3%) to influencer/creator partnerships as a portfolio strategy—not chase last-click attribution.
  • "You were so right...You should just commit to 1%, 2%, 3% of spend going to influencer versus just over indexing on a bunch of like...whatever paid posts..." – Connor [23:06]
• Need to accept potentially lower ROAS on new audience/creative swings and account for “total account” incrementality.

8. Sweepstakes as an Audience & Revenue Multiplier

• Case study: Ridge’s annual sweepstakes (now international). Grand prizes (e.g., Lamborghini or $100K cash) dramatically lift efficient spend year-over-year.
  • "We spent like 85% more year over year [in Canada] and had a...MER improve. In marketing, that never happens." – Connor [51:15]
• Major learnings:
  • Customer experience matters—personalized emails that update users on entry counts outperform batch-and-blast.
  • Higher AOV products (e.g. luggage) drove more entries than expectation; low-price tripwires less effective for generating meaningful participation.
  • Sweepstakes can be leveraged across channels (Meta, YouTube, linear TV) with different creative/adaptations.
  • Integration with creators/influencers (showing the prize car in their content, for example) boosts results—but quality and authenticity of integration trumps just displaying the prize.

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• "I also think creator is a targeting and meta is being...transparent about that now." — Cody [00:10]
• "Most of our partnership ads are from very small creators who, like, we might have just gifted the product to..." — Connor [00:24]
• "If you can get a business that works acquiring women, they're just...It seems to work a little bit, a little bit better." — Connor [45:08]
• "Meta never officially sunsets products, but they're really trying to...just kind of have partnership be the main hub." — Cody [24:16]
• "If we're going to use it for paid, it's usually because we liked the organic content...then we'll follow up and say, hey, can you make something like this?" — Matt [19:45]
• "You should just commit to 1%, 2%, 3% of spend going to influencer." — Connor [23:06]
• "If we list out our biggest wins over the last few years, it comes from...more exciting designs." — Connor [39:03]
• "We had a crazy backlog of CX tickets at one point—I'm embarrassed to say we had a seven day average response time that lasted for longer than it should have..." — Cody [30:26]
• "The only media mix modeling tool revealing halo effects on Amazon sales." — Matt [16:50]

Memorable Moments & Segments

• Richard Branson cameo at YouTube creator summit—impacts the hosts’ thinking on influencer reach and brand sponsorships ([01:43–02:38]).
• Colin & Samir’s conference recaps giving first-hand look at creator-business intersection ([03:04–03:35]).
• Personal sweepstakes stories: Wedding band customer wins $100K ([56:47–66:17]).
• Pragmatic advice: Multiple hosts (and guest) advocate for sticking with partnership ads over legacy whitelisting and always negotiating hard with influencer agents ([13:58], [24:16]).
• New ways to measure audience reach: Using Meta ad delivery breakdowns to see if creative is tapping new age/gender segments ([32:05], [33:47]).

Key Timestamps for Reference

• The importance of targeting new personas for growth: [00:00–00:24]
• Meta’s shift toward creator-signal targeting: [00:10–00:24], [08:27–10:25]
• Strategy for partnership/influencer ads & value exchange: [11:39–13:58], [17:37–20:54]
• Limits of organic influencer distribution: [11:54]
• Negotiating influencer deals & agency role: [12:47–13:58]
• Signal engineering (audience expansion via partnership): [27:14–30:26]
• Case study: partnership ads and incrementality lift: [30:05–30:26]
• Creative “shock the system” comments: [34:56–36:11]
• Sweepstakes strategy, results and CX innovation: [49:15–57:22]
• Measuring new audiences via age/gender splits: [32:05–34:56]
• Closing thoughts on sweepstakes, partnership ads, and next steps: [59:51–63:29]

Tone & Style

The conversation is open, tactical, and operator-to-operator: honest about failures, experimental successes, and the shifting dynamics between creative, influencer, and paid acquisition. Heavy on hard-won experience, anecdotal evidence, and practical takeaways.

Strategic Takeaways

• Meta growth depends on continual audience expansion through creative and persona innovation—don’t be afraid to aim outside your “core.”
• Partnership ads, especially from creator-only handles, are futureproof and offer the strongest blend of signal and scaling.
• Invest consistently into influencer/partnership as a percentage of media budget—be wary of chasing only easily attributable revenue.
• Use product/content innovation (new categories, bold designs) as a springboard for both new and existing audience purchases.
• Measure new audience impact through granular Meta ad reports (age, gender, placement, engagement), not just standard ROAS.
• Leverage cross-channel touchpoints (YouTube, TV, sweepstakes) to amplify new-audience reach and reinforce performance gains.
• Iterate and optimize operational details—especially in campaigns like sweepstakes, small tweaks (personalization, mechanics, integrations) can have outsized results.

This episode is packed with insights for brand operators, growth marketers, and paid media professionals seeking to push Meta, influencer, and creative strategies beyond the obvious and toward sustainable, scalable business impact.