Instagram's Chief Commercial Officer Jim Squire told Business Insider about the future of the app. We have selected short theses of the main thoughts of a person who in 2013 already participated in the integration of advertising into the news feed.
In the article we will tell you the main thing: about advertising in stories, cross-platform advertising on Fb and Instagram, and experiments with commerce.
Why developers are betting on stories
Advertising in stories is popular for one reason: it is cheaper than in the news feed. Today, three million advertisers are already launching it, even though it is more difficult for marketers to create creatives for vertical display.
Advertising in stories is still in its development stage. People are just starting to interact with businesses in this format. For example, stickers with surveys were recently added to stories, which increased the depth of interaction.
Jim believes that the application has not yet reached the point of saturation with advertising, so the number of ads will grow.
Why advertising in the news feed will not go into the background
Firstly, it is still in great demand, and secondly, the developers have already announced the launch of a new advertising format - Branded Content Ads.
Advertising will promote branded posts in the news feed. For example, blogger X makes a post with a well-known brand. The company can then turn this post into an ad so that it can be seen by users who are not even subscribed to the blogger.
The idea of the Instagram developers is interesting: this way the user feels closer to the brand and the brand itself will show that the product is developed by the same people as consumers.
The brand cannot take a post and start advertising it without the user's permission. So the user needs to activate the "Allow Business Partner to Promote" function in the settings and mention the brand.
About the launch of unified advertising for Facebook and Instagram Stories
You need to create creatives for each platform so that they are perceived organically. In the case of stories, the situation is different: this format is practically no different from stories on Facebook, so you can set up a transfer from one platform to another.
Instagram creators and marketers have found that users spend 1-2 seconds on advertising in stories. If the ad doesn't appeal to them, they skip it.
About experiments with commerce on Instagram
In-app purchases will open up great opportunities for everyone: from an ordinary user to an entrepreneur. Instagram developers are creating functionality for cash payments within the application so that users can conveniently make purchases of any type:
- when they know what they are looking for;
- when they have an idea for a purchase but have not yet chosen a brand and model;
- by chance, when the idea for a purchase appeared spontaneously.
Today, about 200 million users enter Explore in search of interesting accounts and content. The developers have added a separate channel for shopping here so that the user can easily buy an item. The function has not yet appeared in Ukraine.
In the future, in-app shopping and advertising will complement each other.
About IGTV
The developers have added horizontal video to IGTV, but the format differs from Fb Watch in content and user experience. The developers' task is to attract the attention of creative and individual personalities, public figures, and celebrities.
Horizontal videos in IGTV attract users with high-quality content.
Even greater potential in Instagram Direct. Today, this tool is already used by consumers and sellers as the main one. The developers will expand the set of tools in Direct to make shopping even more convenient.
Conclusions
The amount of advertising on Instagram will grow. Most of the ads will move from the news feed to stories, so you can get used to the new format right now.
It’s difficult to lure buyers to Amazon when they don’t plan to buy a product, but with Instagram, things are the opposite: users enter the application for fun and already today make unplanned purchases.
Now imagine that buying will become even easier with cash payments within the application: went to check your friends’ news – saw an ad for a sofa – bought it. It’s still difficult to imagine such purchases in the application, but most likely it will be.
