• by Colin Kirkland , February 20, 2025

With 40% of people using creator recommendations on Instagram when shopping, according to Meta, the platform is expanding its Partnership Ads feature with “Testimonials” – a way for creators to monetize via brief written endorsements that are shared as comments on a brand's social-media posts and advertisements.

Partnership Ads, which Instagram compares to “collab posts,” feature an influencer's handle and creative and can be original ad content or organic content that the brand then boosts.

“With a Partnership Ad, the brand pays to show it to even more people, which can help you reach a bigger audience,” the Meta-owned platform explains.

Testimonials -- a new type of Partnership Ad -- are “quick, text-only written endorsements” under 125 characters that appear on an ad.

After a creator negotiates a deal with a brand, the testimonials are pinned to the top of the comments section on the Instagram post, showcasing the comment and the creator, who can then track their testimonials and other Partnership Ads under their Creator Settings in the app. Thai will show them how their content is being used by brands.

According to Instagram, testimonials and Partnership Ads are designed to offer creators higher payouts.

Creators, for example, can charge more money when brands put ad spend behind testimonials of any format, including video, photo and text-only creative.

Instagram also says the ad type is built to help creators reach a larger audience by exposing them to the respective brand's followers and the audience they put ad spend behind.

To attain monetization via Partnership Ads, creators must first create an original photo or video that follows the brand's content requirements. If the brand approves of the creative, the influencer will send over their creation and the brand will upload the final product into Ads Manager.

The Partnership Ads format also allows creators to monetize their previous content. For long-term partnerships, creators can provide a brand with account-level permissions that allow the brand to create a Partnership Ad with any of the creator’s previous posts where the brand is tagged.

For one-off partnerships, Instagram says creators can generate an “ad code” that gives brands content-level permissions. This way, creators can select which of their prior brand-tagged content the respective brand can choose to make into a Partnership Ad.

Testimonials will be available to all creators soon, according to Instagram.