Instagram today announced it’s expanding access to parts of its Creator Market via API to make it easier for brands to discover and work with them on the third-party Creator Marketing platform they’re already using. The company is also expanding creators’ access to branding agencies.
The social network launched Creator Marketplace last July as a hub designed to help brands discover and connect with creators about partnerships and campaigns.
The first new API will allow brands to easily reach creators in a priority inbox in the creator marketplace through the preferred marketing platform for creators. The second API will allow brands to publish curated project briefs to the Creators Market directly from a third party. Instagram is testing these APIs with a small group of creative marketing partners, including Aspire, Captiv8, and CreatorIQ.
The company is also testing custom creator marketplace access for brand agencies to allow them to manage creator discovery and collaborate on behalf of their brand clients. Instagram is testing this access with select partners, including Influential, WPromote, Rickhouse Media, Power Digital, Dentsu, OMG, and Brkfst.
As part of this expansion, agencies will be able to reach creators by gender, age, number of followers, and interests. Agencies will also be able to filter creators based on the demographics of their engaged audience, such as gender, age, interests, country, and city. In addition, agencies can send messages directly to partnering letter folders dedicated to creators and post discoverable projects that qualified creators can apply to.
“Today we’re announcing new ways to discover and reach Instagram Creators by expanding access to brand agencies and testing integrations with top marketing platforms for Creators,” the company wrote in a blog post. “With these updates, our goal is to complement and help grow the robust ecosystem of agencies and third-party platforms that is already helping creators and brands form partnerships.”
Instagram’s positioning in its marketplace for creators is similar to TikTok’s Creator Marketplace, which is the video app’s in-house influencer marketing platform. TikTok’s Creator Marketplace allows brands to discover prominent TikTok personalities in their marketing campaigns, which is similar to Instagram’s Target Marketplace.