How the permissions work
On Meta the creator grants partnership access through their Instagram professional dashboard, which gives you a code to add in Ads Manager. On TikTok the creator generates a Spark Ads authorisation code for a specific post or for their whole account. Both are revocable and time limited.
Ask for a code lasting at least 90 days, ideally 365. Short codes expire mid-campaign and you lose the ad, the learning phase and the engagement that was building on the post. Put the duration in the contract rather than the email thread.
Why it outperforms brand ads
The ad arrives with a person attached. It carries their handle, their follower count and the comments already on the organic post, which is social proof your brand page cannot manufacture. Engagement accumulates on one post instead of resetting with every new creative.
It also lets you scale a winner. When a creator post performs organically, whitelisting puts budget behind the exact asset that already worked instead of a studio recreation of it. That is the cheapest reliable route to more volume from creator marketing.
What it costs and where it goes wrong
Expect to pay a usage fee on top of the content fee, commonly 30% to 100% of the original rate for a set period. Agree it upfront. Retro-fitting whitelisting onto a deal you already signed is the most expensive way to buy it.
The other failure is comment moderation. Ads on a creator’s handle attract comments the creator has to live with, so agree who moderates and set expectations about negative replies. Some creators will refuse whitelisting for that reason alone, which is fair.