Instagram and Facebook are once again letting influencers earn a commission from products they feature, Business Insider reports — a reversal that puts Meta back into the affiliate-creator monetization game it has repeatedly started and stopped over the years.

The reinstatement matters for performance marketers because it restores a native, in-app commission path inside two of the largest social inventory pools in the world. For affiliates running CPL, CPA or hybrid deals that depend on social traffic, a first-party commission mechanism inside Meta's apps changes the economics of routing clicks out to external affiliate networks versus monetizing in place.

What is actually changing?

The core change: influencers can again attach commissionable product tags to their content on Instagram and Facebook. When a follower buys through that tag, the creator receives a payout. This is a commission-based model — closer to CPA than rev-share — executed natively rather than through third-party link cloakers or bio-link funnels.

Details the source does not specify, and that programs should verify before reallocating budget:

• Commission rates per product category
• Cookie or attribution window on tagged purchases
• Payout thresholds and payment schedule
• Eligibility requirements for creators
• Which merchant catalogs participate

Business Insider's headline frames the move with the word "again" — an acknowledgment that Meta has cycled through similar creator-commerce monetization programs before and shut them down. That history is the single largest risk factor for any affiliate building a durable strategy on top of the feature.

How should affiliates and programs read this?

For rev-share and hybrid deal-makers, the practical question is cannibalization versus incremental reach. If Meta keeps the commission inside its own rails, merchants may see tagged-product sales as a separate channel from their affiliate program, which can create attribution disputes — the classic last-click problem, now inside a walled garden. Program managers running CPA deals with social-focused publishers should check whether native Meta commissions count against their own terms.

Compliance context also applies. In the United States, FTC endorsement rules require creators to disclose material connections to brands, and a commission relationship is squarely material. Native commission tags do not remove that obligation; affiliates and merchants should expect disclosure enforcement attention as the feature scales.

Treat performance claims around the feature with caution. No conversion rates, EPC figures or sample sizes accompanied the announcement as reported, so any projections about creator earnings or merchant lift remain vendor assertion rather than measured result.

Why Meta's track record warrants hedging

Meta has a documented pattern of launching creator monetization tools, testing them on limited pools, and retiring them. Affiliates who built funnels on earlier iterations of Instagram shopping commissions absorbed that cost before. The prudent posture for performance marketers is to treat the reopened commission flow as test inventory: measure incremental CPA against existing social campaigns, monitor program-terms conflicts, and avoid migrating core rev-share traffic until payout reliability is demonstrated over multiple cycles.

The reopening signals Meta's continued bet that in-app commerce can retain creators who would otherwise monetize on TikTok Shop or Amazon's creator programs. Whether it sticks this time will depend on the commission terms Meta publishes — and whether creators see payouts that justify staying inside the garden.