LinkedIn Finally Has a Creator Marketplace 💼

I'll be at Cannes Lions next week for the first time, as one of 21 official ambassadors for the LIONS Creators program. I'm also hosting The Creator & Marketer Mixer on Thursday, June 25th with Bia Granja and Adobe's Jared Carneson. It's invite-only, but you can find details and how to express interest here.

I'm still building out my schedule. If you'll be there and want to connect, or if you're hosting an activation or event, feel free to reply or DM me on LinkedIn.

TODAY’S EDITION

One of my predictions for 2024 was that LinkedIn would emerge as a channel for creator marketing and eventually launch its own creator marketplace. The first part proved true. The second part took a little longer than expected, but it's here.

Last week, LinkedIn introduced the LinkedIn Creator Marketplace, a new centralized experience designed to help brands discover and work with creators. The feature is currently in alpha and available to select creators and brands in North America, with support limited to English-language content.

How the Marketplace Works

Available through Campaign Manager, brands can search for creators based on topics, industries, and content expertise. They can view follower counts, posts, engagement metrics, and more, as well as access contact information to reach out for collaborations.

Brands can also identify organic and sponsored content featuring their company and request permission to amplify it through Thought Leader Ads, LinkedIn’s creator-led advertising solution. Additionally, they can activate curated video inventory through the self-serve BrandLink program, allowing ads to run alongside select editorial and creator video content.

Eligible creators can opt into the experience and showcase up to eight posts or feature their most recent content. They can also specify how brands can contact them, including a preferred email address and the option to list an agent or representative.

Creators will also have control over collaboration permissions, including the ability to approve or deny brands from boosting their content.

Why It Matters Now

B2B creator marketing on LinkedIn has exploded in recent years. Sponsored content in feeds is now common, and the numbers back it up: 82 percent of B2B marketers say creators increase credibility with decision-makers.

But one of the biggest friction points has been discovery. Brands have largely had to piece together their own approach, manually identifying creators, relying on cold outreach efforts, or working with a small ecosystem of LinkedIn-focused agencies and creator marketing technology platforms. With the number of creators on LinkedIn doubling between 2021 and 2025, discovery has become increasingly difficult to manage at scale.

The marketplace gives brands a centralized way to discover and evaluate creators through performance insights and analytics, while providing the contact information needed to initiate partnerships. That removes a significant barrier to entry and reduces friction for brands not yet investing in the channel, while helping those already active scale more efficiently.

That efficiency gain matters even more as AI search visibility becomes a growing priority for brands. LinkedIn is already one of the most-cited platforms across major LLMs, which means creator content on the platform can influence how brands appear in AI-generated answers. That's why I predicted for 2026 that brands would partner with creators to improve their visibility in AI-powered search experiences.

How It Supports LinkedIn's Ad Business

With the Creator Marketplace, LinkedIn joins Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, and X in offering some version of a creator marketplace. These tools benefit both brands and creators, but they also serve a clear platform interest: advertising revenue.

At a high level, creator marketplaces make it easier for brands to discover and activate creators, surface organic content featuring those creators, and turn that content into paid amplification through built-in ad formats that improve reach, targeting, and business outcomes. The result is a tighter link between creator activity and advertising inventory. LinkedIn is no different.

With 2028 projected to be the year brands spend more on amplifying creator content than on paying creators to produce it, there are significant ad dollars at stake. The platforms that make it easiest to turn creator content into performance-driven advertising will capture the largest share of that spend. LinkedIn, with the Creator Marketplace and Thought Leader Ads now working in tandem, is positioning itself to compete for that spend.

A Recent Focus on Monetization

The Creator Marketplace is the latest addition to LinkedIn's growing suite of creator monetization tools, something the creator community has been requesting for years. While progress has been gradual, LinkedIn's efforts to help creators earn on the platform have accelerated in the recent year, with the launch of programs like BrandLink, Top Voices 360, and Advice Sessions, along with recent pilots of live digital events with creators. It is also reportedly exploring additional monetization options such as subscriptions.

Regardless of what comes next, helping creators monetize their credibility, expertise, and trust will likely remain at the core of LinkedIn's creator monetization strategy.

Instagram is expanding its "Your Algorithm" topic controls to the main feed, giving users the ability to adjust topics, and eventually people, moods, and content types, to shape their recommendations. It is one of the more meaningful applications of AI in social media, shifting control away from the algorithm and toward the user.

Instagram is rolling out Picture-in-Picture for Reels more broadly, letting videos continue playing in a floating window after users leave the app. The feature could lift watch time and completion rates, though more passive viewing may come at the cost of true viewership.

Facebook launched AI Mode, a new search tab that uses Meta AI to surface answers drawn from public posts, Groups, and Reels rather than returning a list of links. It positions Meta to compete in the answer-engine space using its own social data as the core differentiator.

Meta is partnering with Best Buy to bring its AI glasses and VR headsets into 50 dedicated in-store spaces across the U.S. and Canada. For hardware that benefits from a hands-on experience, expanded retail distribution like this can be a strong lever for driving adoption and helping consumers better understand the products before buying.

Threads has hit 500 million monthly active users, with Communities credited as a key growth driver and now exiting beta with new features including a Communities Hub, Community Icons, and Your Algo. The milestone keeps pressure on X as Threads continues closing the gap on the dominant text-based platform.

YouTube is expanding direct messaging for users 18 and older in the U.S. and select regions, allowing people to send and reply to videos without leaving the app. The return to messaging comes as it becomes an increasingly important feature of social platforms, shaping how content is shared and distributed.

Pinterest officially launched Amazon Storefront linking, a feature I previously spotted in March, allowing creators to connect their Storefront to their profile and add affiliate links when tagging eligible products. With more than half of Pinterest users coming to the platform to shop, this reduces friction in the path from discovery to purchase and reinforces Pinterest’s positioning as a commerce-first platform.

Snapchat unveiled SPECS,its new standalone consumer AR glasses featuring see-through lenses, built-in cameras, hand and voice controls, and AI assistance that can see what you see in real time. The launch marks Snap's biggest hardware bet yet, entering a crowded field alongside Meta, Google, and Apple as the race to own the next everyday personal device heats up.

Snapchat is rolling out a new experience for users aged 13 to 15, limiting profile visibility to mutual friends and removing public like counts for that age group. Teen safety features are becoming baseline expectations, and platforms that get ahead of them are in a better position to address regulation and parental concerns.

Substack launched the next phase of its native sponsorship program. Bestseller-tier creators can now access Creator Kit, a tool for building media kits and signaling interest in brand partnerships to flagship partners including Whatnot, Uber, and Balenciaga. With brands seeking access to engaged newsletter audiences and competitors like beehiiv already facilitating sponsorships, helping creators secure brand deals is a natural next step, especially if Substack takes a cut.

Spotify updated its podcast play count to require at least 30 seconds of listening and introduced two new analytics tools, Audience Segments and Episode Trends, to help creators track listener retention and benchmark episode performance. The changes give creators a more reliable signal of who is actually listening and how individual episodes stack up over time.

Roblox is expanding its Recommended For You algorithm by extending its lookback window from 7 to 28 days. The change is designed to better capture long-term engagement and surface games that retain players over time, rather than those driven by short-term spikes.

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