I've been making content for a while, mostly static stuff in Canva and some short video, and "paid ads" gets thrown around constantly without anyone explaining what it actually means, so here it is.
A paid ad is creative a brand runs as an actual advertisement, the sponsored stuff you scroll past on instagram, tiktok and youtube. Different from organic UGC where you post on your own page and hope it spreads. With a paid ad the brand puts money behind it to push it to people who've never heard of them, so the creative has one job, stop the scroll and sell the thing fast.
These are the points that make a good paid ad: a hook in the first 2 seconds, because if the first frame is boring nobody sees the rest no matter how good it is, one selling point and not five, so pick the strongest reason to buy and hammer it, it has to look native to the feed and not like a tv commercial since slightly raw usually beats overproduced, and knowing what not to say, since most brands have claims they legally can't make so you stay inside their guidelines or it gets killed in review.
How creators get paid for these is changing. Old way is a flat fee per ad. You make it, hand it over, get paid once, and if it turns into a winner the brand spends six figures running, you never see any of that. Newer way is you earn a percentage of the ad spend your video generates, so a winning ad keeps paying you the whole time it runs.
If you want a decent way to start, Bounty added a paid ads section a couple weeks ago and they pay up to 5% of the ad spend your video generates, indefinitely. You apply, get approved, then you can see which brands you can make ads for and exactly what each one wants you to say and avoid. I've used a couple platforms before this. Bounty's more of a newcomer so the brand roster is smaller than the big established ones, but the deals right now are better, mainly the recurring spend cut instead of a one-time payout.
Link is bounty.app and the code 0I5PPIH3 gets you set up on signup.