The Edit: This post is a firsthand walkthrough of ShopMy Spotlights, a new ShopMy feature launched in June 2026 that lets brands put paid Meta ad spend behind a creator’s existing organic Instagram or Facebook content, with the ad running only under the creator’s handle and the commission rate locked at the moment of approval. It explains the 5 step request flow, the three approval modes (Instant Spotlights, Ask Me Every Time, and per brand auto approve), why brands can only crop or resize content (never edit it), and how to enable Spotlights step by step. It covers the launch limits (Meta only at launch, direct to consumer brand partners only, with TikTok to Meta amplification and blog mentions on the roadmap), the separate analytics tab for tracking Spotlights revenue against organic, and the realistic earning expectation that Spotlights is a stack of small commissions rather than a single viral payout. Written by a current ShopMy Icon tier creator and Latina retired Air Force veteran who attended the launch webinar on June 24, 2026, for ShopMy creators evaluating the feature and any creator deciding whether to opt in to brand amplification.

At a Glance

SHOPMY Spotlights	Details
Feature name	ShopMy Spotlights
Launch date	Rolling out beginning June 2026
One sentence summary	Your content, the brand’s ad spend, your commission
Where ads run at launch	Meta only (Facebook and Instagram)
Whose handle the ad runs under	Yours (the creator), never the brand’s
What gets boosted	Existing content you already posted
New content required	None
Brand can alter content	No, crop or resize only
Commission rate	Locked in at the moment you approve
Approval options	Instant Spotlights, Ask Me Every Time, or per brand auto approve
Pause anytime	Yes, brand cannot override your pause
Brands eligible at launch	Direct to consumer brand partners
Tracking	Separate analytics tab so Spotlights revenue is visible apart from organic
Stats you can see	Earnings by week and month, orders driven, impressions, follower growth tied to the ad
Rollout next	TikTok content pulled into Meta ads, then blog mentions on the roadmap
Where to find it in the app	Mobile, next to Opportunities, Gifting, and Discount Codes
If you don’t see it yet	Refresh and update your ShopMy app, check back over the next week or two

I Sat on the ShopMy Creator Launch Call This Morning

I walked into the call this morning with a chip on my shoulder.

You may have already seen creators on another social media platform talking about Spotlights, and the first read going around was the negative one. It went something like, this is just a way for brands to get a ton of creator content without paying for the creation of it. Honestly, that read was not wrong on its face. So I joined the call ready to be skeptical, took the notes, watched the demo, and walked out leaning the other way.

I am writing this the same day, which makes this one of the first honest creator walkthroughs of Spotlights you will find online. I am writing as a current ShopMy Icon-tier creator, generating enough revenue at this tier to know what actually moves on ShopMy and what doesn’t (more on the Icon tier in my recent Icon Tier breakdown). I have also been inside creator ad programs in the past, running campaigns with brands like REI, Susan G. Komen, AT&T, and Train, so the back-end of paid social through a creator handle is not new ground for me. That context matters because it is what lets me tell you honestly what makes Spotlights different.

If you are brand new to ShopMy and need the 30,000-foot view first, start with my complete guide to ShopMy for beginners and come back here. If you have ShopMy set up and you are wondering what Spotlights actually means for you, keep reading 🫶🏼.

Not on ShopMy yet? Applying through a creator’s referral link skips the waitlist and unlocks a 10 percent commission bonus for both of us for 6 months. Use mine here. Once you are in, the rest of this post is going to land a lot harder. (Reach out to me on Instagram if you need help with anything)

What ShopMy Spotlights Actually Is

The One Sentence Definition

On the launch call, Macy from ShopMy’s Creator Experience team described Spotlights as “your content, the brand’s ad spend, and your commission.” That really is the whole feature in one breath, and everything below is just how it plays out.

What This Means in Plain Language

Spotlights lets a brand take a piece of content you have already posted on Instagram or Facebook, put paid Meta ad spend behind it, and run it as an ad under your handle, not theirs. Your existing affiliate link is what is embedded in the ad, so any sales the boosted post drives are tied to your commission. You do not create anything new. You do not get a brief. You do not shoot a new video. The content is already yours, the ad runs under your handle, and the commission is yours when it converts.

What Spotlights Is NOT

It is not whitelisting in the traditional sense, where you hand a brand the keys to your account. It is not a partnership ad where a brand uses your handle for a flat fee. It is not a replacement for ShopMy Opportunities, the paid campaigns where brands pay you for new, briefed content (those are still very much how creators get compensated for original work). And it is not a way for a brand to alter your content. The only thing they can do is crop or resize to fit the native ad format. Everything else stays exactly as you posted it.

The Spotlights Flow in 5 Steps

Here is what actually happens, start to finish.

1) You post normally. You make content on Instagram or Facebook (Reels, feed, stories, any format) and you mention a brand. You do not need to tag the brand in any special way. ShopMy’s system picks up your mentions through hashtags, brand mentions in the caption, and other signals, then routes those posts into a mentions filter the brand can see inside ShopMy. I checked mine after the call, and there was already a catalog of content the algorithm had associated with brands I have mentioned, including posts I had completely forgotten about.

2) The brand discovers your content. A brand on ShopMy can browse the mentions filter for their brand and see every creator who has posted about them. If they see something they want to put paid ad spend behind, they send you a Spotlight request.

3) You see the full request before anything goes live. The request shows you the post itself, the brand sending it, the commission rate, and the affiliate link being used. The link is a duplicate of your existing link, sitting on its own tab in your analytics so you can separate Spotlights earnings from organic. The commission rate is whatever you already have with that brand. No negotiation, but also no surprises.

4) You approve, decline, or ignore. This is the part nobody is hitting hard enough yet. You control the request. Brands cannot run a Spotlight on your content without your sign-off. The only nuance is that requests can expire, so if you are on Ask Me Every Time mode, you have to actually open the app.

5) The ad goes live, only under your handle. When you approve, the ad runs on Meta with your handle on it, the brand name visible only in the small “ad” indicator in the corner. The brand is paying for distribution, not creation. As the ad runs, your dashboard updates with clicks, orders, impressions, and follower growth attributed to the ad. You can pause anytime by giving the brand a brief reason, and they cannot override your pause.

What Makes Spotlights Different (and Why That Matters)

I have run paid campaigns through other creator ad programs before, and I want to be specific about what is different here, because the differences are what flipped my read on the feature.

Commission Rates Are Locked at Approval

This might be the single most important detail in the whole product, especially for anyone who has watched creators on another platform get burned when a brand quietly changed commission rates after a video took off. On Spotlights, the rate is locked the moment you approve the request. A brand cannot adjust it on you mid-flight. Whatever you saw when you accepted is what you earn for the duration of that Spotlight. If you want to see how commission rates work across the ShopMy ecosystem more broadly, my ShopMy vs LTK breakdown walks through the standard ranges.

The Brand Cannot Alter Your Content

This was the second concern I walked in with and the second one to flip. The team was explicit on the call: the brand cannot edit your content. Crop or resize only, and only to fit the native ad format. Your voice, your message, your framing, all of it stays exactly as you posted it. For anyone who has worried about creative integrity getting lost once a brand takes your content into their hands, this is the answer.

You See the Back End for Once

In most traditional paid campaign setups, you hand over the asset, the brand runs it inside their own ad account, and you never see how it actually performed. Spotlights flips that. You see earnings by week or month, orders driven, impressions, and follower growth attributed to the ad, all inside your own ShopMy dashboard. As a creator who came up through other paid programs, I cannot overstate how much better this is for actually learning. Ad creation is its own art form, separate from organic content, and the only way you get better at it is by seeing what worked, what didn’t, and why. With Spotlights, you finally get to.

The Power Is in the Stack

The team was upfront about this. One Spotlight commission is not going to outperform a single big flat-fee deliverable. They were not pretending otherwise. The power of Spotlights is when several are running at the same time across different brands (a beauty brand, a fashion brand, a home brand, all simultaneously), each one quietly compounding in the background. That is when this stops being a trickle and starts being a real incremental revenue stream. The way Macy described it on the call, the whole system is designed to run in the background while you sleep. That framing is honest. It is not a get-rich moment. It is a compounding one ✨.

The Concerns I Walked In With (and What Flipped Each One)

Because I want this post to actually help you decide, let me walk through the four worries I had at the start of the call and where I landed on each.

Concern 1: “Are They Going to Repost My Content Across Other Platforms?”

On other social media platforms, when you opt into a creator ad program, there is a real chance your content gets pulled and reposted in places you did not authorize. That was my first worry coming into the call.

Where I landed: At launch, Spotlights only runs on Meta. That is Facebook and Instagram, and the ad always runs under your handle, never the brand’s. The team noted that pulling TikTok content into Meta ads is on the near roadmap, and blog post mentions are in the works for later. But the core principle (your handle, your link, your control) holds across all of it. The expansion is for your reach, not the brand’s leverage.

Concern 2: “Can the Brand Change My Content?”

This was the bigger fear. Content that gets repurposed into ads sometimes ends up edited into something you would not recognize or approve.

Where I landed: No. The brand cannot alter your content. Crop and resize only. That is the rule.

Concern 3: “Can the Brand Change My Commission Mid-Flight?”

On another platform, I have personally watched creators complain about brands quietly changing commission rates on viral videos, leaving them earning a fraction of what they thought they would.

Where I landed: No. Commission is locked at approval. This was actually the moment on the call where my skepticism cracked the most.

Concern 4: “Is This Just a Way for Brands to Skip Paying Creators for Content?”

This was the read I had seen elsewhere, and it is still a fair question to ask. If brands can boost existing content cheaply, are they going to stop paying for new content?

Where I landed: I do not think so, for one specific reason. Brands run product launches multiple times a year, and product launches require new, briefed, on-message content tied to a specific window. You cannot run a product launch off an organic post from three months ago. You need new creative, on a schedule, and that work still requires flat-fee compensation. ShopMy Opportunities (paid campaigns) are still very much how that gets done, and the team was clear that Spotlights is additive to Opportunities, not a replacement for them. I will be watching this in real life over the next year, but for now, the structure makes sense.

Where the Gray Areas Still Are

I would not be writing this honestly if I pretended there were no open questions. There are.

FTC Disclosure Is the Big One

This is the part I am still sitting with. If you are opted into Spotlights and you are creating organic content knowing that a brand might pull it into a paid ad later, does that change your disclosure obligations on the original post? I do not have a clean answer for you, and frankly, I am not the person to give legal advice. What I can tell you is that the FTC has been getting more aggressive about disclosure broadly, and Instagram is now letting creators tag products on all content as of this week. Between those two threads, the disclosure landscape on creator-to-ad pipelines is going to evolve fast. I am being conservative on my own content and watching how platform guidance develops.

Whether Reach on the Original Organic Post Changes

The team did not address this directly, and I think it is worth flagging. On some platforms, the algorithm penalizes reach on content it identifies as paid. Because the Spotlight runs as a separate ad with its own targeting and budget on Meta’s side, my best read is that the organic version of the post should not be affected. But this is a thing to watch.

These are not deal-breakers for me. They are reasons to opt in thoughtfully and keep paying attention.

Approval Settings: Instant vs Ask Me Every Time

When you go through Spotlights onboarding, you have to pick how requests get handled. Here is the breakdown.

Instant Spotlights

For brands you already know and trust, requests auto-approve and the Spotlight starts running in the background. The upside is true passive earning, no missed requests, and brands can act fast on your content while it is still relevant. The downside is that you are trusting the platform and the brand to behave inside the rules, which (given the commission lock and the no-alteration rule) is a more defensible bet here than it would be on another platform.

I personally turned Instant Spotlights on this morning. But here is the move I would recommend if you are nervous: do not flip Instant on for everything right away. ShopMy lets you build a brand roster so that specific, trusted brands auto-approve while everything else still routes to manual approval. That setup gives you speed where it matters and friction where it should be.

Ask Me Every Time

You manually approve each request. More control, slower in practice. The one catch worth flagging: requests can expire. If you are not in the app regularly, you can miss earning opportunities just by not seeing the request in time. If this is your preference, set a calendar reminder to check Spotlights once a week minimum.

Auto Approve by Brand (the In Between)

This is the setting I think most creators are going to land on once they settle in. You stay on manual approval as your default, but you whitelist specific brands you trust to auto-run. It is the best of both modes, and on desktop it is genuinely a few clicks to set up. If you have already been working with a brand through Opportunities or gifting and you trust their team, that is a good candidate for the roster.

Realistic Expectations: What This Looks Like in Your Dashboard

Setting honest expectations matters, because Spotlights is being talked about in a way that can sound too good.

For most creators, Spotlights is going to feel like a slow trickle, not a flood. A few dollars here from one brand, a few there from another, layered on top of your regular ShopMy commission. Where it becomes meaningful is the stack. If you have ten brands running Spotlights at any given time, that is ten quiet revenue streams compounding while you are not doing anything new. That is not a viral payday, but it is exactly the kind of compounding income my year-one ShopMy review was built around. The whole game on ShopMy is consistency, and Spotlights is just one more lever pulling in the same direction.

The exception to the trickle expectation is a viral post. If a brand decides to put real money behind content of yours that is already performing well, the math changes fast. Your commission scales with the ad performance, and you do not need many of those to feel it in your weekly Friday payout 💖.

Who Can Run Spotlights Right Now

At launch, the team noted a few important limits on participation.

Eligible brands are direct-to-consumer brand partners on ShopMy. Major traditional retailers are not part of Spotlights at launch. Which actually makes sense, because the brands that get the most out of this feature are ones with a clear product, a clear conversion funnel, and the ad-spend infrastructure to run Meta campaigns. DTC brands check all three boxes.

The platforms are Meta first (Facebook and Instagram). TikTok video content being pulled into Meta ads is the next rollout, and blog post mentions are on the roadmap after that. So if you create across multiple platforms (and most of us do), the surface area for Spotlights is going to keep growing.

How to Check If You Have Spotlights Yet

The rollout is happening in waves, so not every creator will see Spotlights in their app immediately. Here is what to do.

First, update your ShopMy app to the latest version. This is the single biggest reason creators are not seeing the feature yet. The Spotlights onboarding modal will not appear until you are on the latest build.

Second, refresh and look for the Spotlights section in your mobile app. It should appear next to your Opportunities, Gifting, and Discount Codes. If you do not see it after updating, give it another day or two and check again. The team explicitly said to refresh and keep checking back over the next week or two as the rollout continues.

Third, if it is still not visible after a week, reach out to ShopMy support directly. They are actively helping creators who are missing the feature get onboarded.

How to Connect Spotlights to Meta: The Step by Step Setup

Here is the setup walkthrough, based on the launch demo. The UI may look slightly different depending on whether you start from mobile or desktop, but the flow is the same.

Step 1: Update Your ShopMy App

Go to your app store, search ShopMy, and update to the latest version. Even if your app says it is up to date, force close and reopen it. The Spotlights onboarding modal only triggers when you launch the latest build.

Step 2: Complete the Meta Partnership Setup

When you open the app after updating, you should see a Spotlights onboarding prompt. The first thing it walks you through is connecting your Meta accounts (Instagram and Facebook) to ShopMy’s Spotlights system. Follow the in-app instructions. This is what enables ShopMy to push the boosted ad through Meta under your handle.

Step 3: Pick Your Approval Setting

Once Meta is connected, you choose between Instant Spotlights, Ask Me Every Time, or a custom brand roster. You can change this any time, so do not stress about the first pick. My recommendation: start on Ask Me Every Time so you can see how the first few requests feel, then upgrade to Instant (or build a roster) once you trust the process. I went straight to Instant because I have been on ShopMy long enough to know the brands I trust, but most creators should start more conservatively.

Step 4: Find the Spotlights Section in Your App

After onboarding, the Spotlights section lives in your mobile app next to Opportunities, Gifting, and Discount Codes. From there you can see pending requests, live Spotlights, paused Spotlights, and a catalog of your existing brand-mention content that is eligible to be Spotlighted. That catalog is worth scrolling through, because it shows you exactly what ShopMy’s algorithm has flagged as brand-associated, which is the same view a brand sees on their end.

Step 5: Build Your Brand Roster on Desktop

If you want the auto-approve-by-brand setup, this is easiest to do on desktop. Log into ShopMy in a browser, go to your Spotlights settings, and pick the specific brands you trust enough to auto-approve. The desktop dashboard is also where the deeper analytics live (earnings by week and month, follower growth tied to ads, total live Spotlights), so it is worth poking around once you are set up.

Step 6: Update Your Old Captions

This is the move I would actively make this week. Instagram and Facebook both let you edit captions on existing posts. Go back through your last few months of content, find the posts that mention brands you would be happy to see boosted, and make sure those brand names and any relevant hashtags are clearly in the caption. The cleaner your mention signal, the more easily ShopMy’s algorithm picks the post up for the brand’s mentions filter, which is what triggers a Spotlight request in the first place.

Here is the bonus reason this matters that I want you to sit with for a second. The brand-side view of that mentions catalog is the same view brands use to spot creators they might want to gift. So being intentional about clean brand mentions in your captions, even when you do not want to “waste” a tag or hashtag on a particular brand, is not just feeding the Spotlights algorithm. It is also putting you on the radar for gifting going forward. Mention the brand cleanly in the caption (even quietly) and you are showing up in the same catalog brands use to pick who they gift and who they boost. If gifting is your bigger goal, my Icon Tier post has my fullest current take on how gifting actually moves on ShopMy, and I am building out a dedicated gifting guide that will go much deeper 💖.

My Honest Take, as a Day-One Creator

I am going to test it.

I turned Instant Spotlights on this morning. I am going to run it for the next few weeks across the brands I already work with, watch the data in the dashboard, and see whether the stack actually meaningfully adds to my Friday payout or whether it stays in the trickle range. If you have read my honest year-one ShopMy review, you know I am not going to tell you something works until I have lived through it. So this is the start of the test, not the verdict.

What I will say is that the structural decisions ShopMy made (commission lock, no content alteration, full back-end transparency, creator-only handle, opt-in control with pause) are the right ones. They genuinely addressed the four things creators have been getting burned on with paid amplification on other platforms. Whether that translates into real money for the average creator is the part still to be seen.

If you are sitting on the fence, here is my honest recommendation. Opt in. Start on Ask Me Every Time. Pay attention. Adjust to Instant or build a brand roster once you have seen a few requests come through and know what you are saying yes to. You can change your settings at any time, you can pause any Spotlight at any time, and the brand cannot override your decision. That is a low-risk way to participate in the upside while keeping the door open if something feels off.

FAQ: ShopMy Spotlights

Ready to Try Spotlights for Yourself?

If this post flipped your read on Spotlights the way the launch call flipped mine, the move now is to make sure you are set up to participate. Update your ShopMy app, complete the Meta partnership setup, and pick your approval setting. That is it. The ads run themselves once the foundation is in place.

Not on ShopMy yet? Spotlights only works once you have an active ShopMy account, and applying through a creator’s referral link skips the waitlist and unlocks a 10 percent commission bonus for both of us for 6 months. Apply through my referral here, or use the code SALTYVAGABONDS. Once you are in, come back to this post and walk through the setup.

The honest closing: I do not yet know what Spotlights is going to look like in my weekly payout three months from now. I will tell you when I do. What I do know is that the structure is fair, the commission is protected, the content is protected, and the back-end transparency is the best I have seen on a creator ad product. That is a foundation worth showing up for.

I am rooting for you 💖✨.

The Full ShopMy Creator Series

Here is the whole series in one place so you can find what you need next. You are reading the bolded one 🫶🏼.

• A Complete Guide to ShopMy for Beginners
• Is ShopMy Worth It in 2026? My Honest Year-One Review
• ShopMy vs LTK: Which One Actually Pays Creators More?
• ShopMy for Beginners: How to Get Approved, Set Up, and Actually Start Earning
• How to Use ShopMy on Pinterest to Actually Make Money (A Creator’s Playbook)
• How to Reach ShopMy Trendsetter Tier: The Fast Track from Ambassador
• ShopMy Icon Tier, Explained by a Creator Who Just Got There
• ShopMy Spotlights, Day One: A Creator’s Honest Walkthrough of the New Ad Feature (you are here ✨)