What is UGC whitelisting?

UGC whitelisting is the arrangement in which a creator grants a brand permission to run paid ads from the creator's own social account rather than from the brand's. The ad carries the creator's handle, profile picture, and existing engagement, so it appears in feed as a post from a person rather than an advertisement from a company.

Meta implements this through partnership ads, TikTok through its Spark Ads mechanism, and both require the creator to issue an authorisation the brand then applies to a campaign. The performance argument is that identical creative reliably performs better when it runs from a creator handle, because the source is read as a person. The operational costs are real: the permission is time-limited and has to be renewed, the creator retains the ability to revoke it or delete the underlying post, and the terms need to specify the ad account, the duration, and whether the brand may edit the creative. Disclosure obligations apply regardless of whose handle appears, since the material connection between brand and creator exists either way.