Instagram has officially started testing its new creator marketplace, a hub designed to help brands discover and reach out to creators across partnerships and campaigns. The marketplace is currently available by invitation only to brands in the United States.
Brands invited to access the marketplace can use the desktop experience within Meta Business Suite to filter creators by gender, age, number of followers, and interests. Brands can also filter creators based on the demographics of their engaged audience, using filters such as gender, age, interests, country, and city. In addition, companies can see creators who have expressed an interest in collaborating with them through the ‘interested creators’ tab. They can also see or follow creators who have tagged them through a ‘tags and follows’ tab. Brands can also see creators similar to the creators they’ve already discovered through the filters. They can then add creators to saved lists.
Once brands have discovered creators they want to collaborate with, they can use the marketplace to create campaigns and share them with creators. They can then provide creators with information about the campaign, such as desired deliverables and fees. Messages sent to creators appear in a newly created Partnership Messages Inbox. Creators can comment and align with brands via DMs directly within the Instagram app.
“This is all part of our commitment to making Instagram the best place for creators to earn a living doing what they love — all while helping brands discover creators to collaborate with,” he said. Instagram in a blog post.
The official announcement comes a few weeks after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company was testing a designated place on Instagram where creators can be discovered and paid for content.
Meta’s take on its creator marketplace is similar to TikTok’s Creator Marketplace, the video app’s internal influencer marketing platform. TikTok’s Creator Marketplace allows brands to discover top TikTok personalities for their marketing campaigns, which is what Meta seems to want to do with its own creator marketplace. Obviously, Meta’s Creator Marketplace will be part of its ongoing effort to tackle TikTok.