Glossary
A platform where brands and creators find each other and transact, ranging from open listing boards to full workflow platforms that carry the deal end to end.
An influencer marketplace is a platform where brands and creators find each other and transact. The term covers a wide range, from open listing boards where creators post their rates and brands browse, to full influencer marketing platforms that carry the deal from discovery through payment.
The kind of marketplace you use determines how much of the workflow you still have to run yourself. An open listing board connects you to creators but leaves briefing, contracting, approval, attribution, and payment to you. A full workflow marketplace carries all of it. For a brand running two creators a quarter, an open board plus email is fine. For a brand running twenty, the open board model collapses and a workflow marketplace is what scales. The mistake is buying the cheaper open board when you needed the workflow, or buying the enterprise workflow when you only needed the connections. Read how to choose an influencer marketing platform for the decision framework. For comparisons, see Infmap vs Collabstr and Infmap vs Influencer Hero.
Infmap is a workflow marketplace, not an open board. Discovery connects brands and creators, and the platform carries the deal through negotiation, contract, approval, attribution, and payment. The creator side is a real profile with synced analytics and a wallet, not a listing. The difference matters because the value of a marketplace is not the connection, it is whether the connection becomes a closed, attributed, paid deal without leaving the platform.
A brand finds a creator on an open board and emails them. The deal is negotiated in email, contracted in a Word doc, approved in a thread, and paid through an invoice. Five tools, and the attribution is a guess. The same brand on Infmap finds the creator, starts a deal from the profile, signs a contract on the platform, approves content in the deal, and pays through the wallet. One tool, and the attribution is recorded. The marketplace that carries the deal is the one that produces defensible ROI.