Facebook has announced some new additions to its publisher tools, including expanded access to its Brand Collabs influencer discovery and connection database, and new metrics within its Creator Studio dashboard.

First off, on Brand Collabs Manager - introduced mid last year, Brand Collabs Manager is a database of potential Facebook and Instagram influencers which your business can connect with in order to arrange promotional partnerships.

Initially, Brand Collabs Manager was only open to limited set of creators, but now, Facebook is expanding that access.

As explained by Facebook: 

"Today we’re announcing that creators in over 40 countries can now apply for access to Brand Collabs Manager, bringing it in line with Ad Breaks. And we’ll continue expanding in coming months." 

In order to qualify as a relevant influencer, and be listed in Brand Collabs Manager, creators will need to:

• Have at least 1,000 followers
• Have 15,000 engagements on your posts over the last two months OR 
• Have 180,000 minutes viewed, or 30,000 1-minute views on videos that are 3-minutes or longer within the last two months.

You can check if your Page qualifies here.

In addition to this, Facebook is also rolling out some new data insights to Creator Studio in order to help publishers and creators better understand how their content is being engaged with, and maximize that interaction. 

"In the coming weeks, we’ll introduce a new data visualization in Creator Studio called Traffic Source Insights. Publishers and creators will clearly see how their content is distributed across Facebook, and be able to optimize for each source."

As you can see here, the new Traffic Source data will provide insights into video watch time and retention metrics among four categories - 'Followers', 'Shares', 'Recommended' and 'Paid'. That will better enable publishers to understand where their traffic is coming from, and better optimize their strategy around such. 

Publishers will also be able to dig deeper and get more specific data on each of their videos.

Facebook is also adding some new Instagram tools to Creator Studio, making it easier for publishers to manage their Instagram presence, and their broader Facebook presence overall, from a single dashboard.

Soon, Instagram publishers using Creator Studio will be able to:

• Tag Instagram accounts - Creators will be able to tag feed photos, and photos-within-carousel posts, and those tags will be 'tappable' once published.
• Tag a post with a brand partner - Facebook's also expanding its Branded Content Tags to Instagram posts created within Creator Studio, which will add a 'Paid Partnership' tags to your posts and enable tagged partners to view reach and engagement metrics on the same. Facebook also recently added Branded Content Tags for IGTV.​
• Turn off comments on an Instagram post - You'll also now be able to switch off Instagram post comments from within Creator Studio

​And lastly, Facebook's also rolling out an update for its 'Facebook Stars' on-platform payment system for live-streamers.

Mostly geared towards gaming streamers (though expanded to more creators back in September), Facebook's Stars can be purchased by viewers (in certain regions) and allocated to creators in order to provide them with monetary reward them for their work.

Facebook's new tools will enable creators to see more information about who sent them Stars during their live videos, "including the top three Stars senders, in real-time during their live stream".

Facebook's also adding a "Star Goals" option, which will enable creators to set a public goal for the number of Stars they’d like to receive, in order to better engage their viewers in the donation process. For example, a streamer could say they'll do something if they reach a specific amount of Stars during a broadcast, incentivizing more donations.

Stars are not big earning option for streamers at this stage, but as Facebook continues to focus on gaming, and expanding Stars to new types of creators, it could provide another avenue for publishers to make money from what they do, supplementing other sources.

The new changes are being rolled out now, though they may not be immediately available as Facebook works to bring them to each respective region and group.