Until this year, a brand working with creators on Meta used two separate tools: Creator Marketplace to find and contact creators, and the Partnership Ads Hub to turn their posts into ads. In June 2026, at Cannes, Meta said it would merge them into a single Creator Marketing Hub. The combined tool was presented during IAB's first Global Creator Week in mid-September, with features rolling out through the rest of 2026.
This is a summary of what Meta has published and what the trade press reported from the launch. Meta's own launch post was not available when we checked, so the September details come from Social Media Today, MediaPost and Marketing Dive.
Partnership ads, briefly
Partnership ads, which Meta used to call branded content ads, run under a creator's handle rather than the brand's, and carry the Paid partnership label. The viewer sees a post from a person they may already follow, with the brand named alongside. Meta says that adding partnership ads to a brand's usual campaigns brings, on average, a 19 percent lower cost per acquisition and a 13 percent higher click-through rate. As with any platform's figures about its own product, treat that as a reason to test.
Permission is handled with an ad code. The creator generates a code for a post and sends it to the brand, which uses it to run the post as an ad. Since December 2025, this also works for user-generated content in which the brand is not tagged, which opens up posts from customers and fans, with their permission.
What the Hub adds
- Discovery: Meta said at Cannes that more than 5 million Instagram creators could already be found, with Facebook creators being added. The Hub can also surface content from creators a brand has not worked with yet, filtered by the products tagged in it.
- Recommendations tied to the campaign's objective, and new search filters, including one for content that is predicted to work for affiliate marketing.
- Permissions at the level of a single piece of content, with an expiry date, so the right to run a post as an ad ends when the agreement does.
- Editing, including removing copyrighted music and stickers from a creator's post before it runs as an ad.
- Messaging with creators inside the Hub, with Meta's AI business assistant built in.
- One-click creation of a partnership ad from a creator's post, and performance data from paid campaigns alongside the organic results.
For agencies that work through software, Meta added Facebook creators to its Creator Marketplace API, which was previously Instagram only, launched a messaging API and expanded its content discovery API. Partnership ads can also be created and managed through Meta's ads connector for AI agents.
Live partnership ads
Meta has been bringing ads to live video. It announced live video ads for Instagram and a wider rollout on Facebook in June 2026, and from 29 September 2026 a creator's live content on Instagram can be run as a partnership ad. How the format appears and how it is set up is still thin on detail in Meta's own material, so test it on a small budget before promising a client a live campaign.
Can Gulf brands and creators use it?
For brands, the answer looks like yes. Creator Marketplace started in 19 countries, and in January 2026 Meta opened brand access beyond them, without naming the new countries. Features in the Hub are still rolling out, so not every account will see everything at once.
For creators, it is less clear. The creator markets Meta has documented are in North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia, and none of them is in the Gulf. Whether UAE or Saudi creators can be listed and discovered in the Hub was not confirmed when we checked. A Gulf brand may find it easier to use the Hub for its partnership ads, with creators it already works with, than for discovering local creators.
What to agree before running a creator's post as an ad
- The paid usage period, matched to the permission's expiry date in the Hub, with room to extend.
- The fee for paid usage, on top of the fee for the post.
- What the brand may edit, since the Hub can remove music and stickers, and who approves the final version.
- The disclosure: the paid partnership setting on the organic post, and in the UAE, the creator's advertiser permit.
- Music rights, if the post uses a track that is not cleared for commercial use.
The Hub makes the mechanics easier, but it does not replace the contract. A post whose permission expires halfway through a campaign, or a creator who never agreed to paid usage, is a problem no tool will solve.
Before booking any creator, the free fake follower checker on this site looks for the patterns that suggest bought followers, and the influencer rate calculator gives a starting rate to which the paid usage can be added.
