To find brands to work with, look first for brands that already pay creators in your niche rather than brands you simply like: search Meta's Ad Library for posts carrying the paid partnership label, check TikTok's Top Ads and the labelled sponsorships in TikTok and YouTube videos like yours, add the retailers and local businesses your audience uses, and record every brand with its evidence, contact route and a fit score.
Why evidence of creator spend comes first
A brand that has paid creators before already has a budget, a process and usually a person who reads pitches. A brand that has never done it may still say yes, but you will be selling the whole idea of creator marketing as well as yourself. Start with the first group and keep the second for brands you know well or already buy from.
Evidence comes in several forms, roughly from strongest to weakest:
- Paid partnership labels on posts by creators of a similar size and niche to you.
- Ads built from creator-style footage, which show the brand buys or licenses that format.
- An affiliate, ambassador or creator programme advertised on the brand's own website.
- Labelled gifted posts from creators, a sign the brand at least seeds product.
- Job adverts or agency case pages mentioning influencer or creator marketing for the brand.
Meta Ad Library: the branded content search
Meta's About the Meta Ad Library page says the library holds all active ads across Meta's apps and also all active, public branded content shown on Facebook and Instagram with a paid partnership label, for content created on or after 17 August 2023. For each branded post it shows the creation date, the creator, the brand partner, the type of post and a link.
- Open the Ad Library's branded content search.
- Choose Instagram or Facebook and set a date range; Meta's page says both are required.
- Search by the Page or Instagram profile of a creator similar to you, or of a brand you are curious about.
- Write down every brand partner that appears for creators in your niche and size range.
- Switch to the ads search, look up the brand's Page and use the country selector to see what it is advertising where your audience lives.
Meta's Ad Library tools page describes the same branded content database. Ads delivered in the EU or the UK carry more detail, such as reach broken down by location, age and gender, according to Meta's help page; for ads elsewhere you mostly see the creative, the Page and the date the ad started.
TikTok: Top Ads and labelled partnerships
TikTok's Creative Center includes a Top Ads dashboard of high-performing ads that you can filter by region, industry and campaign objective, then sort by measures such as reach or click-through rate, according to TikTok's Top Ads Dashboard help page. The same page notes that you only see five ads unless you are logged in.
- Log in to the TikTok Creative Center and open Top Ads under Inspiration.
- Filter to your audience's region and the industry your content fits.
- Look for ads that use creator-style footage and note the brands behind them.
- Open See Analytics on promising ads to understand which moments held attention, which helps when you later pitch an idea.
Separately, browse your niche's hashtags and note posts with TikTok's Paid partnership label, which creators add through TikTok's commercial content disclosure setting. Our guide to TikTok paid partnership disclosure explains what each label means and which deals they cover.
YouTube and Google: sponsor slots and advertiser lookups
Sponsored YouTube videos carry a paid promotion disclosure when the creator ticks the box in YouTube Studio, and YouTube's help page on branded content disclosure labels includes a link for searching videos where creators have declared branded content. Watch the sponsor segments in channels close to yours and log every brand. Repeat sponsors are the strongest prospects, because a second booking suggests the first one worked well enough to renew.
For a wider view of a brand's advertising, the Google Ads Transparency Center lets you look up advertisers; Google's advertiser verification help describes it as providing context about an advertiser and their ads. A brand that is actively advertising on YouTube and search has money moving now, which makes it a better prospect than one with nothing live.
Reading the evidence without over-reading it
A label or an ad tells you a relationship exists. It does not tell you the fee, whether the creator was paid at all, or whether the brand was happy with the result. Read each signal for what it can and cannot show before you rank a brand.
| Signal you found | What it suggests | Not proven by this signal |
|---|---|---|
| Paid partnership label on a creator post | The brand has a commercial relationship with creators and knows the labelling routine | That money changed hands; gifted and affiliate posts carry labels too |
| The same brand across several creators | A running programme with someone managing it | That it takes outside pitches rather than working through an agency roster |
| A repeat sponsor on one channel | The earlier booking performed well enough to renew | That a smaller channel would get the same terms |
| Creator-style footage in the brand's own ads | The brand buys or licenses UGC and has an ad budget | That it wants posts on creators' own channels |
| An affiliate programme page | The brand pays for sales, so it tracks results | That flat fees are available; you may need to propose them |
The creator-style ad row is the cue for a UGC pitch rather than a sponsored post, priced on production and usage instead of your reach.
Retailers, local shops and your own receipts
Libraries and dashboards only show what brands label or advertise, so fill the gaps from the world around you.
- Brands stocked by the retailers your audience shops at, especially newer ones trying to build awareness.
- Local businesses you already use, an approach covered in our guide to brand deals for small creators.
- Your own order history and the products your audience keeps asking about in comments.
- Brands sponsoring creators a step or two bigger than you in the same niche.
- Brands taking part in Meta Creator Marketplace: Instagram's getting-started page says you can only pick a brand as a preferred partner if it currently participates, so the list itself tells you who is open to creator work.
Platform marketplaces are a separate route where brands come looking for you. Our influencer marketplaces comparison explains who can join each one and who pays.
The prospect list template
Keep one row per brand. Fill the evidence column with a link and the date you saw it, because labels and ads disappear from view once campaigns end.
| Column | What to record | Example entry |
|---|---|---|
| Brand and product line | The brand and the specific range you would pitch | [Brand], new refill range |
| Evidence of creator spend | A link to a labelled post or a creator-style ad, with the date you saw it | Ad Library branded content result for a similar creator, seen [date] |
| Where you found it | The tool or place the evidence came from | Meta Ad Library, TikTok Top Ads or a YouTube sponsor segment |
| Contact route | Partnerships email, contact form, agency or marketplace | Partnerships address published on the brand's press page |
| Decision-maker | The role or name of the person, if it is published | Influencer marketing lead listed on the brand's site |
| Fit score | The total from the brand-fit scorecard | Scored with the pitch scorecard |
| Category rules | Any platform restriction you would need to plan around | None, or alcohol needing an age restriction |
| Status and next step | Researching, pitched, follow-up due or parked, with a date | Pitch drafted, send on [date] |
Sort the sheet by fit score first and by how recent the evidence is second. A high-scoring brand with spend you saw last week beats a perfect fit whose only labelled post is a year old.
Keep the list alive with a short routine rather than an occasional marathon:
- Block a regular research slot in your week and use it only for prospecting.
- Run the same searches each time, starting with the creators closest to you in the Ad Library.
- Add new brands with evidence and a date; don't pitch them in the same session.
- Re-check older rows and park any brand whose evidence has gone stale.
- Pick the top few rows for this week's pitches and move them to the pitch stage.
Finding the right person without buying a list
Most brands publish a route for creator enquiries somewhere: a partnerships or press page, a footer contact form, or the name of the PR or influencer agency they work with. YouTube's tips for getting brand deals also suggest finding a company's marketing directors on LinkedIn.
Don't buy or scrape contact lists. The ACMA's spam guidance says the Spam Act bans using lists created with address-harvesting software, and in the UK the ICO's business-to-business guidance says UK GDPR applies when you hold the name of the person who represents a business. Collect each contact yourself, note where you found it, and read the compliance notes in our brand pitch email templates before you write to anyone.
Limitations of these research tools
Every tool here only shows what is labelled, active or advertised. A brand with no visible creator activity may still have budget, and some posts that should carry a label don't. Meta's branded content search starts in August 2023 and covers public, active content only, and filters and regional detail change over time and differ by country and by whether you are logged in. Treat everything you find as a lead to check rather than proof of a budget, then follow the steps after the list in how to get brand deals.