Liam Walsh
Liam is a Co-Director at Intelligency and heads up the agency's Digital Intelligence & Paid Social activity. Over the last decade, he has worked with brands from the world of sports such as Premier League clubs to entertainment such as Channel 4 and Disney.
This week Instagram announced that it would expand its Creator Marketplace offering into eight new countries: the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, India, Brazil & Japan. The marketplace is a platform which connects creators and brands for advertising or paid partnerships. Chinese export brands are also expected to join the marketplace in the next year.
Why has Meta decided to expand the marketplace tool?
The platform was initially launched in the US in 2022, where both brands and creators have found much success. Instagram claimed that thousands of brands and creators have been onboarded since then. Consequently, Instagram also added API features which allowed briefs to be outlined and agencies were invited to join.
Furthermore, Instagram is competing with other offerings from rivals such as Snap, YouTube and TikTok which offer a similar model. Instagram wants to ensure that its platform is the most effective and influential partnership space.
How does the tool work?
The marketplace allows marketers to approach creators for a paid partnership or even a partnership ad, and this can help drive organic traffic or conversions. Creators can access the professional dashboard via their Instagram app and can feature the topics and themes that are most relatable to them. Thus, removing any confusion or mistaken connections.
The dashboard is boosted by algorithmic machine learning technology. This allows for a more tailored version of the dashboard for each user and expedites brand matches. Alternatively, a brand could manually search for a creator outside of these specifications if they so wished.
Once a request is made, creators will be able to see all the messages in their Partnership Messages folder in the app. Here they can review the content and assess whether they’d like to reply.
The expansion hasn’t arrived just yet, but we recommend creators keep an eye on the Meta Business Suite for when the rollout is complete.
