Instagram launches its marketplace to connect brands and creators in 8 new countries

Instagram said today that it is expanding its marketplace tool to connect brands with creators for paid partnerships or ads in eight new countries. The new markets that will get access to this marketplace include Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Japan, India, and Brazil.

The company first started testing this platform in the U.S. in 2022. It said that since then it has onboarded “thousands” of creators and brands. Last year, the social media company added API features for creator outreach and structuring briefs; and invited agencies to use the platform.

Meta added that apart from making the platform available to the brands in these eight countries, it will also invite Chinese export brands to connect with creators outside of China.

The company said that over the next few weeks, it will invite both brands and creators to join the marketplace in these eight new regions. Marketers can approach creators for a paid partnership or even a partnership ad, which allows advertisers to boost organic content as ads.

Once creators join the platform through the professional dashboard in the Instagram app, they can highlight their content, and list brands and interests that would be relevant to them.

On the marketplace, Meta helps brands match with relevant creators for a particular marketing campaign through its machine learning algorithm. Companies can also search manually for creators and apply filters — in creator and audience categories — and ad experience to refine the results.

Creators will see all the requests and conversations with brands initiated through the marketplace in a new folder on Instagram called “Partnership messages.” They can review the details of the marketing campaign within the app as well.

Instagram’s rivals like Snap, YouTube, and TikTok all offer creator marketplace functionality. Besides that, some startups are trying to solve the problem of connecting brands with creators. Accel-backed Catch+Relase is helping brands discover licensable content better. Agentio, which has raised  $4.25 million in seed investment funding co-led by Craft Ventures and AlleyCorp, has built a platform to organize the process of YouTubers selling ad slots in their videos. Breaker, which has Marc Benioff, a16z/TxO, ex-CEO of Tik Tok Kevin Mayer, and RGA Ventures as investors, connects record labels and artists to influencers to run promotion campaigns.