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Instagram Advertising Rolls Out To Businesses of All Sizes with 30 Second Ads

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Instagram has finally announced that the new advertising model it has previously trialed with huge brands, is beginning to roll out for businesses of all sizes, whether large or small.

The Facebook-owned social network has long been free from advertising, but earlier this year Instagram began testing advertising from big brands. Whilst this received mixed views from Instagram users, it was simply an inevitable evolution of the platform in order to monetise it. Especially after Facebook spent $1 billion acquiring it.

Now, Instagram has introduced advertising campaigns for any size business.

Businesses of all sizes have been testing these new capabilities this summer with positive results, and we’re seeing significant demand, particularly in areas like e-commerce, travel, entertainment and retail. We’re thrilled to see what brands can achieve in the months ahead using Instagram as their creative canvas.

Not only this, but Instagram are also launching adverts in 30 new countries, including Spain, Mexico and South Korea, which is launching globally on September 30th.

Instagram is making the most of the technology behind Facebook’s ads infrastructure, allowing for targeted advertising, and the ability to reach audiences on topics they care about.

Instagram advertising

Why advertise on Instagram?

Instagram has become a forerunner of social networking, becoming as popular as Facebook and Twitter. Whilst many brands fail to make use of the platform, there are many businesses finding a huge audience there, and reaping the rewards.

If you have a brand that has some form of visual side, whether that means offering product images or photos of what your business achieves, then this is very useful to provide visual inspiration.

As far as statistics go:

  • Instagram state that “97% of measured campaigns on Instagram have generated significant lifts in ad recall”.
  • 300 million active monthly users
  • Over 30 billion photos shared so far
  • 2.5 billion likes every day
  • 70 million photos shared per day on average
  • Instagram boasts a per-follower engagement rate of 4.21 percent, which is 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook offers, and 120 times more engagement per follower than Twitter

What can Instagram advertising achieve?

As far as what you can get out of Instagram advertising, it’s pretty broad. Especially compared to the fact that Instagram posts have never allowed for links to be embedded; until advertising has been introduced.

By advertising, it can lead to:

  • Web site clicks
  • Mobile app installs
  • Brand awareness
  • Product slideshows.

Here are a few examples Instagram has highlighted on their business blog:

  • Designer furniture retailer Made.com’s ads yielded a 10% order value increase versus its benchmark.
  • Gilt Groupe turned to Instagram to win new customers, and ran a campaign that drove an 85% lift in app installs.
  • Game developer Kabam’s campaign helped it effectively acquire new players that stayed in their game longer and purchased more.
  • The North Face used iconic imagery to heighten awareness of its “believe in the impossible” speaker series, with results showing high engagement to learn more.

New advertising formats and features

As well as rolling out advertising to more businesses than before, Instagram has introduced new features and formats:

  • 30-second videos, doubling from 15 seconds seen before
  • Landscape photo and videos, rather than having to stick to the square format Instagram is known for
  • Marquees which allows for mass awareness in a certain time-frame, aimed at events and product launches
  • Delivery and optimisation tools to drive campaigns across both Instagram and Facebook

These changes have most likely been introduced so marketers can repurpose any photos or videos that currently exist, without having to create Instagram-specific content.

Otherwise, Instagram has also rolled out landscape and portrait photos for Instagram users too – which is a move met by both criticism and praise from the public. Whether the Instagram feed now stands to become more personalised and unique, or messy and


Overall, it seems that although Instagram has become a very popular and important social network to be present on, it’s also now a very promising medium for advertising.

With such surprising statistics, and a very wide audience which continues to grow, it’s likely more and more businesses of all shapes and sizes will make the most of Instagram advertising.

Xanthos get social