Meta partnership ads for wineries: creator content, alcohol rules

Meta partnership ads let a winery run a creator's content as an ad, from the creator's account or from both accounts together. You pay for the ad and set the targeting; the creator gives permission with an ad code. For wine, they are alcohol ads: they need age and country targeting (21+ in the US), and the creator's post must use Meta's branded content tool.

Wineries already work with creators. What usually happens is a free visit, a nice post, and nothing after the post leaves the feed. Partnership ads turn that post into something you can put budget behind, target, and measure.

What are partnership ads, and how are they different from boosting?

There are three ways a winery can pay to show a creator's content:

• Reposting it on your own account and boosting it. Your name is on the ad. The creator's trust is mostly lost, because the post now comes from the brand.
• Whitelisting. The old way: the creator gave the brand access to run ads through their handle. It was informal and depended on shared logins or business access.
• Partnership ads. Meta's official version. The ad shows the creator's handle, or both handles, in the header. The creator grants permission without giving you access to their account, and either partner can revoke it at any time.

The reason to use partnership ads is that the recommendation comes from someone the audience already follows, while you keep control of who sees it and how much you spend.

How do you set up partnership ads?

There are two ways to get permission:

1. The creator sends you an ad code. In Instagram, the creator generates a partnership ad code for a post and shares it with you. You add the code when you create the ad in Ads Manager. A code can be used by up to two partners, and it also works for archived posts.
2. You send a request. In Meta's Partnership Ads Hub, you request permission from the creator, at the level of one post or of their whole account.

The creator needs a professional account on Instagram, or a Page or profile in professional mode on Facebook.

From there, a partnership ad is a normal campaign. Pick one goal (tasting bookings, club sign-ups or online sales), optimise for that event, and set the audience yourself. I walk through that setup in how to run wine Facebook ads that fill your tasting room.

What alcohol rules apply to creator content?

All of them, twice: once for the creator's organic post and once for your ad.

The organic post. Meta treats content a creator posts in exchange for payment or free products as branded content. It has to be published with the branded content tool, which shows the "Paid partnership" label, and the creator has to tag your winery with your permission. A free tasting counts as an exchange of value.

The age and country rules. Branded content that promotes alcohol must follow local laws and industry codes and be restricted by age and country. Meta's minimums:

Meta also blocks alcohol content in a list of countries, including Norway and Lithuania. The full list is in Meta's alcohol ad policy for wineries.

The ad. When you put budget behind the post, set the age floor per country in each ad set, exactly as you would for your own ads.

US industry codes. In the US, the TTB treats paid influencer posts as advertising, and the Wine Institute's Code of Advertising Standards expects people shown drinking to be at least 25 and ads not to run where more than 26.2% of the audience is underage. I cover both in wine advertising rules in the US and EU.

How should a winery choose creators?

Choose by audience first and by wine knowledge second.

• Ask for the audience age breakdown before anything else. A creator with a young audience can't legally carry your ad in the US, however good the content is. Most creators can share their audience demographics from Instagram's insights.
• Look beyond wine influencers. Food, travel, local lifestyle and hosting creators reach people who buy wine for a dinner or a weekend away, and they rarely get asked by wineries.
• Prefer several small creators to one big one. You can test which content actually sells, and move the budget behind the winner.
• Check the creator's past content against the rules: no drinking with driving or sport, no health claims, no minors in the frame.

What should you agree with the creator?

Put it in writing before the visit:

• What they post, and that it uses the branded content tool.
• How long you can run it as an ad, and on which platforms. Thirty, sixty or ninety days are common terms.
• What you pay for the post and, separately, for the usage rights.
• What happens at the end: the permission is revoked and the ads stop.

The creator keeps ownership of their content unless you agree otherwise.

How do you measure partnership ads?

Like any other campaign: by bookings and sales, not by likes. The ad runs through your ad account, so purchases and bookings tracked on your website count against it. If your bookings happen on Tock, FareHarbor or another platform, connect them first with the setup in tracking bookings and sales that happen off your website.

Compare each creator's ads against your own best ad, on the same goal and budget. If a creator's content brings bookings at a lower cost, it earns more budget. If it doesn't, you've learned that before spending much.

If you want help turning creator content into ads that book tastings, I run paid media for wineries and wine tourism and every engagement starts with a free account audit.