Good news for brands and creators as Instagram recently announced its plan to extend access to parts of its creator marketplace via API in order to make it easier for brands to discover and work with creators on the third-party creator marketing platform they already use.

Launching last July, the creator marketplace was initially designed to help brands discover and establish working relationships with creators about potential partnerships and campaigns. It strikes various similarities to TikTok’s creator marketplace. 

To break down Instagram’s extension plans via APIs, the first new API will enable brands to reach creators with ease in a priority inbox on the creator marketplace through their preferred creator marketing platform. The second API enables brands to publish structured project briefs to the creator marketplace straight from a third party. 

The main reason for Instagram introducing these extensions is to “complement and help evolve the robust third party ecosystem of agencies and platforms”. 

To test these APIs, Instagram is working with a small selection of creator marketing partners, including Aspire, Captiv8, and CreatorIQ. In addition to testing new APIs, Instagram is testing dedicated access to the creator marketplace for brand agencies in order to allow them to manage creator discovery and collaborations on behalf of their brand clients. To do this, they are working with selected partners such as Influential, WPromote, Rickhouse Media, and Power Digital.

As part of this expansion, agencies will have access to filter creators by gender, age, number of followers, and interests.

In a blog post, Instagram explained its reasons for the expansion: “Today, we’re announcing new ways to discover and reach Instagram creators by expanding access to brand agencies and testing integrations with top creator marketing platforms. With these updates, our goal is to complement and help evolve the robust third-party ecosystem of agencies and platforms already helping creators and brands form partnerships.”