“This API will allow brands that typically won't go through the front door of the marketplace,” Sovay said in an interview. “But if Unilever or LVMH work through Creator IQ as your system of record, (the CreatorIQ dashboard) can highlight which creators are Instagram approved and highlighted. Now the brand can send a (direct message) directly into your creator (mailbox). The creators get more deal flow
The direct-to-DM component is an important piece, Sovay said, because it ensures brand inquiries don’t get lost in an influencer’s overflowing emailbox or DM folder. Sovay said. Deal inquiries go to a new priority inbox within the creator’s DMs, with an easy yes-no process for creators to join a campaign.
And instead of one-to-one communications, a brand can send an inquiry to many potential influencer partners at once, and build structured campaign briefs to outline what would be involved.
“Brands have gone from working with hundreds or thousands of creators to now tens of thousands of creators,” Sovay said. “Some of the most sophisticated are working with hundreds of thousands of creators. It’s not about organic distribution anymore, it's paid reach. Then you also have affiliate relationships. Retailers are building always-on creator networks, and many other retailers are building out affiliate networks” with response rates as high as 15%.
“Creators need the ability to interact with both followers and brands seamlessly and efficiently in order to grow their business,” said Instagram Product Director Lucy Baker. “Giving Instagram creators access to the thousands of brands that use CreatorIQ to manage their creator marketing efforts provides a seamless experience so they can better share ideas, grow their trade, and foster long-term business partnerships.”
The marketplace also helps on the other end of campaigns, tracking how they worked with a given creator’s audience, and yielding deeper information about campaign performance.
“The value is vetted creators, additional insights on those creators, and an easier way to contact them through CreatorIQ through IG DMs,” Sovay said. “On the creator side, the idea is to open up more deal flow.”
The new marketplace comes amid an inflection point in the maturing social-media industry that may make Meta’s announcement particularly well timed for brands seeking stable and safe platforms for their campaigns:
- Current industry darling TikTok is facing bipartisan calls in Congress and beyond to be banned in the United States because of possible user-data exposures to the Chinese government.
- Twitter is now subject to Elon Musk’s erratic dictates and initiatives, which has sparked an advertiser exodus and numerous other issues. This week, Musk tweeted that Twitter as a company is no more, subsumed into his X corporation, with plans to become a payments app too.
- Older platforms, from Facebook to Snap, are seeing flattening growth, though it’s important to note that Meta’s Facebook and Instagram are still gigantic, with more than 2 billion users each. That translates into massive audiences that can be targeted with startling precision.
CreatorIQ, which has been working with Instagram on the API and other projects for “a few months,” will make it available to an initial test group of clients before expanding it more widely in coming months.