Meta has announced plans to expand Instagram Creator Marketplace, which will give more brands the ability to search for suitable creators or influencers to work with on marketing campaigns.

Instagram’s Creator Marketplace

Creator Marketplace was launched in 2022 and initially let brands in the States search and connect with creators based on several criteria, such as:

• Followers.
• Location.
• Focus areas.
• Audience demographics.

Now, it’s been expanded to businesses in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Japan, India and Brazil. Chinese exporters can also use it to facilitate campaigns with creators outside China.

How businesses use it

Instagram is also testing machine-learning recommendations that help brands discover creators who are a great fit for campaigns, which will help cut down the time they need to manually search for the right people to work with.

Facebook

“To help match the right creators and brands for campaigns, we’re testing new custom, machine learning-powered creator recommendations for each brand. Brands can also search for creators, filtering for creator and audience attributes. They can also see a list of creators who have expressed interest and check out creator portfolios.”

To get involved, brands need to join creator marketplace in Meta Business Suite. Brands can then get in touch with creators directly, or send a project to multiple creators until one of them bites.

How it works for Creators

As well as being good for brands, this is also good news for more creators, who will have access to a fresh revenue stream. If contacted, creators will receive brand messages in their Partnership Messages folder at the top of a Primary tab. Creators can review all details of the proposed partnership, as well as the most important one – the rate – within Instagram.

The business benefits

Brand Content can be a powerful tool on Instagram as it allows marketers to tap into an established audience, many of whom will be highly engaged. As Creator Marketplace can help brands find the most suitable creators to work with, there’s an even better chance that campaigns will land within the right communities and spark a pleasing return on investment.

We’ve briefly gone over how you can use it – here’s a bit more detail on how brands can access Creator Marketplace.

1. Go to Meta Business Suite, click Creator Marketplace from the left-hand nav bar.
2. Click Get started.
3. Follow the instructions.

You can find creators by searching by username or keywords, by using filters like age or location, search by interested creators who’ve expressed a desire to work with you, previous partnerships, creators who’ve tagged you in their content, creators who follow you and recommended creators.

To message a creator on Instagram, click on the creator’s profile and then click on the message icon.

You can also make a list of creators to keep in your back pocket for future campaigns.

How it ties in with Partnership Ads

Creator Marketplace ties with Partnership Ads, which allow advertisers to run ads in partnership with creators and other businesses. Partnership Ads feature both accounts in the ad’s header, while the adverts benefit from improved ranking and performance because it leverages signals from both accounts.

Instagram says Partnership Ads has three main benefits.

Instagram

“(Brands can) partner with creators to create more authentic and engaging content that results in more performant ads. (The format has) the ability to run ads from your account and a creator’s account to reach new audiences (while providing) access to insights on ad performance in Ads Manager.”