Creator-led advertising has become one of the most reliable engines of growth across Meta platforms—but most brands still can’t scale it. That’s the central message of Superfiliate’s new industry report, “The Partnership Ads Unlock: Scaling the Future of Creator-Led Advertising.”
The findings paint a clear picture: Partnership Ads outperform traditional Meta ads across nearly every major metric, yet operational bottlenecks are keeping most brands far behind their potential.
Superfiliate, a creator commerce platform built for the new wave of social shopping, surveyed 24 fast-growing direct-to-consumer brands collectively spending more than $300 million a year on Meta Partnership Ads. The format, which allows brands to boost creator posts as paid ads while retaining the creator’s handle and voice, is quickly becoming Meta’s preferred path to scale creator content.
It’s also outperforming almost everything.
According to the report, Partnership Ads deliver:
- 19% lower cost per acquisition
- 71% higher brand lift
- 53% higher click-through rates
And yet—only 4% of brands are satisfied with how much they’re currently investing.
“Brands are leaving millions on the table,” said Andy Cloyd, Co-Founder and CEO of Superfiliate. “The performance data is overwhelming. The problem isn’t proving they work—it’s building the operational foundation to scale them.”
The Infrastructure Breakdown
The report identifies a three-part bottleneck preventing scale—what Superfiliate calls the “Infrastructure Crisis”:
- 45% struggle to discover high-performing creators with actionable data
- 41% can’t measure performance tied directly to creators
- 37% face friction authenticating creator ad accounts
It’s a problem familiar to anyone who’s tried to expand a creator program beyond a handful of partners: manual outreach, permission delays, scattered attribution dashboards, and endless technical back-and-forth.
Superfiliate’s research adds nuance. The barriers look different depending on the size of the brand:
For brands spending under $250K/month:
Attribution is the villain.
58% cite a lack of campaign-level transparency, making it difficult to justify scaling budgets.
For brands spending $250K+/month:
Authentication is the killer.
57% say the biggest blocker is the endless slog of permissions and account setup.
Despite all this friction, the highest-spending brands are seeing eye-popping efficiency:
28% report consistent 3–5x ROAS, making a compelling case that systematic execution—not experimentation—is the real unlock.
Scaling Isn’t the Problem—Systematizing Is
“Brands know which creators perform well, but they have no systematic way to find more like them,” said Anders Bill, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Superfiliate. “It’s not a creativity problem or a budget problem. It’s an infrastructure problem.”
This line—an infrastructure problem—captures the broader challenge in creator-led performance marketing. Partnership Ads may be Meta’s most efficient ad format, but without automation, bandwidth, and reliable data, programs hit a ceiling.
Weeks are wasted coordinating permissions.
Discovery is largely guesswork.
Performance data is scattered across dashboards with no unified readout.
The report argues that this chaos is suppressing budgets—not poor performance.
A Blueprint for Breaking Through Bottlenecks
Superfiliate’s report doesn’t just diagnose the problems; it outlines tactical frameworks for both midsize and enterprise brands:
- Brands spending under $250K/month can use the findings to build business cases for attribution tools that deliver campaign-level transparency and tie results directly to creators.
- Brands above $250K/month get a clear mandate to invest in authentication and workflow automation that reduce creator onboarding from weeks to days.
This is where Superfiliate’s own platform steps in.
The company says its toolset directly addresses the top-three barriers preventing scale:
- AI-powered Creator Discovery (via Meta APIs) to surface high-performing, brand-fit creators
- One-click authentication to replace weeks of manual permissions
- Integrated Meta Ads Suite for creator-level performance tracking and automated optimization
In theory, that’s the playbook for turning Partnership Ads from a high-performing tactic into a repeatable growth system.
The Bigger Picture: Creator-Led Advertising Is Becoming the Default
With the creator economy racing toward $528 billion by 2030, Superfiliate argues that Partnership Ads are on track to become the dominant social advertising format. And if the performance data holds, the only thing stopping brands from shifting more budget isn’t results—it’s the lack of a scalable operating system.
Meta has built the format.
Creators have built the content.
Consumers trust it.
Now brands need the infrastructure to turn small wins into sustainable, systematized acquisition programs.
Superfiliate’s report aims to be the roadmap.
