From approved video to live Meta ad without downloading

The old way to turn a UGC video into an ad has five steps and a spreadsheet. Download the file. Rename it so you can find it later. Upload it to Ads Manager. Type the creator’s name in a naming convention nobody follows. Then, weeks later, work out which creator made the video that is carrying the account. Build Ads replaces that with one screen inside the campaign, and the file never touches a laptop. This post is the exact path, what you set once, and why launching from the platform is what keeps the creator’s share honest.

Connect Meta once per campaign

Every campaign has an Ads tab from day one. Until an ad network is connected, the tab asks for one: you sign in to Meta from the campaign and choose which ad account the videos should land in; a brand with several accounts picks one per build. A creator share of ad spend is a separate, optional setting behind the tab’s gear. Build Ads opens as soon as a network is connected, with or without a share.

Approval is the gate

Build Ads lists approved videos only. That is a rule of the review, not a limitation of the builder. While a video is in review you watch it in the player, and you approve it, request changes or decline it; the file is not downloadable in that state, by anyone on the brand side. Once approved, the video is yours: it sits in the Library with the right to download it, and it appears in Build Ads. The point of the rule is that creators film for brands who have not paid yet, and a video that could be taken before the decision is a video that gets taken.

The build, step by step

1. Pick the videos. The approved videos of the campaign, as tiles, with the creator, the product the video was filmed with and the term each one carries: a share of ad spend, or no share. Filters narrow by creator, product and status.
2. Pick the account. The Meta ad account the ads go into, remembered for the next build. One campaign can feed several accounts over time, one per build.
3. Set the defaults. The campaign and ad set the ads join, the naming template so every ad is named the same way with the creator and the video in the name, and the primary texts and headlines from your copy templates. These are saved per campaign, so the second build is a review, not a form.
4. Review and launch. The review adds up what you picked in words, including what the videos will pay their creators, and the launch creates the ads in your account. From there you manage budget, audience and schedule in Ads Manager like any other ad.

Why the tie matters: the share

If the campaign carries a creator share of ad spend, the share is counted on the ads built from the platform. The spend on each ad is read from your connected account, per ad, and matched to the video it was built from and to the creator who made it. Her share accrues from that reading, and the Ads tab shows the upcoming charge before it is taken, by video and by creator. A video downloaded and uploaded by hand in Ads Manager is not tied to anything, so nothing can be counted for it. Launching from Build Ads is how the brand keeps the promise the brief made, and it costs nothing extra to keep it.

The term a video pays under is the one it carried when it was uploaded. Build Ads shows it next to each tile, so a team can see at a glance that the videos from the first month pay one way and the newer ones another, and the review sums it before launch. The post on commission-based UGC explains how those terms are set and changed.

What you see after launch

The Ads tab reads your account back. Spend over time, results, the top creators and the top products by spend, and a per-creative view that shows which videos are carrying the budget. The numbers are the network’s, read per ad; nothing is estimated on our side. When a campaign also carries a share of sales, the attribution choice decides which sales count: the network’s own count, or ours through Shopify or the Hourly pixel, with both shown side by side when both exist.

Running the videos from the creator’s handle

A video can also run as a partnership ad, from the creator’s own Instagram handle with your brand named as the sponsor, when she has connected her account and approved the partnership. Build Ads marks the videos that can, and lets you keep only those in a build. That flow has its own post: partnership ads from the creator’s handle.

A clean build, every time

• Name once. Set the naming template on the first build with the creator and the video in it. Every later build inherits it, and your reports in Ads Manager read by creator without anyone typing.
• Keep copy templates per angle. Primary texts for the problem-led videos, others for the demo-led ones. The builder lets you pick per build, so the copy matches the shape of the video.
• Build small, often. Three videos into one ad set tells you more than fifteen at once, and the per-creative view makes the next pick obvious.
• Let the review be the check. The sum in words before launch is where a wrong account, a missing share or a stray video shows up.

The UGC for paid ads page shows the full path from brief to live ad, and the content library page explains how approved videos are kept and found. If you want the briefs that produce ad-ready videos in the first place, read how to write a UGC brief creators follow.