What used to be an exclusive, invite only advertising situation has now become a ‘slather it on thick’ Insta-ad free for all. That’s right – the occasional Big Mac ad that you’d catch fleetingly as you scrolled through your Insta-feed has now become an avalanche of poorly guised Instagram advertising, ready to penetrate the only sacred social media space you had left.
Of course, if you’re a business who wants to advertise to the niche lifestyle and foodie crowd on Instagram, this is totally great news, because now you too can demand more eyeball time from potential customers while they’re on the bus, train or sitting on the loo (don’t even pretend this isn’t something you do). So you want a piece of the Insta-action? Here’s the low-down.
Businesses can now share their stories with a highly engaged audience in a creative and quality environment, with considerably less content saturation than other platforms.
There are three ad formats available on Instagram:
- Image ads
- Video ads
- Carousel ads
Do you want your target audience to see an image? Bam – they’ve got image ads. Perhaps you fancy sharing 30 seconds of blissful branding to the willing eyes of your consumers? They’re introduced video ads for that. Or, for an additional layer of depth Instagram has introduced carousel ads, allowing users to swipe between a number of images, with the addition of a call to action button.
As a small cog in the Facebook family powerhouse, Instagram ads can be purchased through Facebook’s self-serve platform, Power Editor. Just like Facebook, you’ve got total control over budget, schedule, audience and placement. Measuring your Instagram Ad results is the same as your Facebook reporting (don’t fix what isn’t broken, right?), and is as simple taking a look at your campaign and ad sets in Power Editor and assessing the data you care most about.
So go select some little square images and start Insta-advertising before the corporate companies ruin it for the lot of us.