'There are businesses that will be disrupted and go out of business': Facebook is shaking up influencer marketing

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• Facebook is the latest platform trying to stake its claim in the world of influencer marketing with its Brand Collabs Manager tool, launched in June 2018.
• The social network plays matchmaker for brands and influencers on Facebook, connecting them on a broad range of criteria.
• The tool is being welcomed by advertisers, as it has made their influencer search more efficient
• But it threatens an entire cottage industry of talent-rep firms, specialist agencies and influencer databases that cropped up when influencer marketing started to take off.

Facebook is the latest platform trying to stake its claim on the world of influencer marketing.

Facebook recently launched the Brand Collabs Manager, a tool that helps connect brands with social media influencers on its platform. Think of it as Tinder for brands, where they can swipe left or right on influencers based on their audience demographics and portfolio of previous sponsored work.

The company began testing the product out with small number of brands in January 2018, expanding it to a broader base in June. Over 1,000 creators and 400 brands are already using the the tool.

Expect it to roll out more broadly and become a bigger priority for the social media giant as it continues to build and reiterate on it moving forward.

"Given how much advertisers tell us they want to be able to reach fresh faces with more accurate understanding of who these folks are - and how much of a business driver it is - Brand Collabs Manager is a big thing we're investing in this year," Kate Orseth, director of media Monetization at Facebook, told Business Insider. ...

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