Short version: The brand is asking to put its own money behind your post, or your handle, as its ad. Meta calls these partnership ads and TikTok calls them Spark Ads. Either way it takes your permission in the app, and the FTC's endorsement rules travel with the ad.
A post you make for a deal reaches your followers. A paid ad reaches whoever the brand pays to reach. Marketers call this "paid usage" or "whitelisting." Instagram and TikTok have their own names for it, and each one has a switch you control.
Your post reaches your followers. The ad reaches whoever the brand pays to reach.
On Instagram and Facebook: partnership ads
Meta's developer documentation says partnership ads "allow you to run Facebook and Instagram ads from a creator or other partner's handle." The ad runs under your handle, paid for by the brand. Meta's help center notes that "branded content ads are now called partnership ads."
The help center says advertisers need permission "from the partner whose handle the ad will include." There are two kinds, and they reach very different distances.
Content-level permission covers one post, story or reel. You give it by turning on the "Allow brand partner to boost" switch on a post that tags the brand with the paid partnership label, or by sharing a partnership ad code.
A code works on any post, story or reel you share it for, the help center says, "regardless of whether it's branded content or if the advertiser is tagged." The brand can also edit the content for the ad, and your original post stays the same.
Account-level permission is wider. Meta says it lets a brand "create partnership ads, other ad types and marketing messages from a partner's handle without pre-existing content."
It also lets the brand make ads from any of your existing posts that tag it, "including archived content," and include or leave out your own custom audience in the campaign. Meta describes this level as "more suitable for ongoing partnerships."
So a brand with account-level permission can run an ad under your handle from zero of your posts. That's your name on an ad you didn't post, for as long as the permission stays on.
Meta's help center also says "creators and other partners can revoke these permissions at any time," post by post or for the whole account. On both levels, brands can hide comments on the ad and on your original post, and you can unhide them.
On TikTok: Spark Ads
TikTok's help center calls Spark Ads "a native ad format that allows you to leverage organic TikTok posts." A brand can run ads from your organic post "with their authorization," meaning yours.
TikTok counts what the ad earns toward your post. Its help page says "all views, comments, shares, likes, and follows gained from boosting the video" go to that organic post.
The permission is a code. TikTok's guide for advertisers says the creator has to allow authorized posts in their profile settings, then opens the video's ad settings, generates a code and picks how long it lasts. The durations it lists are 7, 30, 60 or 365 days.
The code is for that one video, for the time you picked.
TikTok also says a video has to be "un-authorized as a Spark Ad" before it can be deleted from your account. Picking 365 days and picking 7 days are two very different deals for the same video.
What the FTC's rules say about the ad
The FTC's Endorsement Guides, 16 CFR Part 255, are the agency's reading of the law on endorsements in advertising. They say "tags in social media posts" and "depictions of the name, signature, likeness" of a person can be endorsements.
Section 255.5 says a connection between the endorser and the brand that the audience wouldn't expect has to be disclosed "clearly and conspicuously." Material connections include "monetary payment or the provision of free or discounted products."
The Guides say a social media disclosure "should be unavoidable."
One of their examples is an influencer who relies "solely upon a social media platform's built-in disclosure tool," in small white text on a light image for five seconds. The FTC calls that disclosure easy to miss and not clear and conspicuous.
TikTok has a rule of its own. Its help center says creators "must turn on the commercial content disclosure setting" on posts that promote a brand, which shows a label such as "Paid partnership."
The part about running it later
Two lines in section 255.1 matter once a post becomes an ad that keeps running. A brand may use an expert's or a celebrity's endorsement "only so long as it has good reason to believe that the endorser continues to subscribe to the views presented."
And when an ad says you use the product, you had to be "a bona fide user of it at the time the endorsement was given." The brand may keep running it only while it has good reason to believe you still are.
The Guides put responsibility on both sides. Advertisers "are subject to liability" for misleading endorsements and missing disclosures. Endorsers "may also be liable for failing to disclose unexpected material connections."
Where it shows up in a contract
The app switch is one place. The contract is the other. The usage-rights part of a deal answers how your name, image and content can be used, and for how long. A clear version names the channels, a time limit, and whether paid ads are included.
A deal that pays for two posts and a deal that also lets the brand run them as ads for a year are different deals, even at the same price. I'd want to know which one I was signing.
What Leave does with this
Upload a contract and Leave reads the usage rights back in plain words, including how long they run and where. Leave takes 0 percent of any deal and never talks to the brand for you. You decide what to sign. Every source is linked at the bottom.
Questions people ask
Is letting a brand boost my post the same as the usage rights in my contract?
No. The permission in the app is the switch that lets the ad run. The usage-rights part of the contract is where a deal says whether paid ads are included, on which channels and for how long. They sit in two different places.
Can I turn the permission off later?
Meta's help center says creators can revoke partnership ad permissions at any time, for the whole account or post by post. On TikTok, the creator picks how long a Spark Ads code lasts when making it, 7, 30, 60 or 365 days. What the contract says about ending is a separate question.
Who has to say the ad is paid?
Under the FTC's Endorsement Guides, a paid connection the audience wouldn't expect has to be disclosed clearly and conspicuously. The Guides say an advertiser can be liable for a missing disclosure, and so can the endorser.
Be your own agent. Leave.