Facebook Opens 'Brand Collabs Manager' For More Brands & Influencers

In keeping with its 2019 expansion and focus on influencer marketing, Facebook has announced an extension to its influencer platform, Brand Collabs Manager.

Just in time for the end of year push, Facebook has expanded to more countries and tweaked eligibility, opening up access to more influencers.

Soft launched in 2018; the Brand Collabs Manager was created to pair brands and influencers (i.e. Creators) together, across Facebook and Instagram.

Part search engine, part database, part match-maker, Collabs Manager provides businesses with a detailed, unbiased, ‘warts and all’ view on online creators based on the demographics of their audience and portfolios of their past sponsored content.

Reducing reliance on dubious creator self-reported stats.

Kate Orseth, Video Product Manager & Jeff Birkeland, Head of Creator & Publisher Experience

“To help advertisers find creators for branded content partnerships, based on real insights, we introduced Brand Collabs Manager.

Today we’re announcing that creators in over 40 countries can now apply for access to Brand Collabs Manager, bringing it in line with Ad Breaks. And we’ll continue expanding in coming months.”

Given the problems which blight influencer activity, the move is likely to be widely welcomed by marketers, as some of the influencer smoke and mirrors begins to clear.

Source & Engage Influencers Based Upon REAL Data

With Collabs Manager organisations can discover creators based on:

1. Top countries where they’re popular
2. Audience interests
3. Audience gender
4. Audience education
5. Audience relationship status
6. Audience life events

On the flip-side, creators can put themselves in the shop window, compiling portfolios connected to their Facebook Page showcasing how they can work with brands.

To qualify as a creator, and be listed in Brand Collabs Manager, creators will now need to:

• Have at least 1,000 followers
• Have 15,000 engagements on their posts over the last two months OR
• Have 180,000 minutes viewed, or 30,000 1-minute views on videos that are 3-minutes or longer within the previous two months.

Creators who wish to join can check if their Page qualifies here.

Same Same, But Different

The Brand Collab Manager hasn’t sort to reinvent the wheel, offering many of the same features and functions that can be found in existing influencer platforms.

Rather Facebook has done what it usually does, and mimics those in-market already, before building out and expanding feature sets and functionality.

No doubt, tying to integrations with its Branded Content ads and ecommerce features.

While it is still early days for the Brand Collabs Manager, its intent is clear, to cut out the middlemen who have ultimately developed the space to date. i.e. influencer marketplaces and other hangers on.

While this will not happen immediately, the company founders and VCs who have bankrolled these businesses must be despondent.

Saving some impressive product pivoting, many of these businesses will either have to consolidate or go to the wall within the next 1-3 years. As has been the case in other areas of MarTech.

For marketers, you can access the Brand Collabs at https://www.facebook.com/collabsmanager/ now.