“Our aim is to make any advertisements you see feel as natural to Instagram as the photos and videos many of you already enjoy from your favorite brands.” — Instagram blog post
One of the most popular photo-sharing app Instagram is bring ads to your news feeds after accumulating its user more than 150 million people and selling to Facebook Inc. for 1 billion dollars. Beginning in the U.S. the next 3 months, users of instagram will start noticing that there will be some random brand pictures and videos that they don’t follow on their newsfeed. However, they are still allowed to close the ads if they dislike the pictures. In other words, in order for the effectiveness and sustainability of the advertisements, the marketing team of Instagram is aiming to make the advertisements as enjoyable and high-quality as many other photos and videos that are favored by numerous users.
what will an Instagram ad look like? (video)
Although the Facebook change in the term of services sparked some revolts from the users, this is still a great time for Instagram to start making money from the paid advertisements because firstly it has built a solid and strong relationships with the users. One of the major concerns that a lot of social media companies might have about the paid pop-up ads are the users’ complaints and boycotts. However, this will not be an issue for Instagram because it has grown its customer base to a vast amount of people who are literally depending on Instagram to update their lives instantly to their friends who are also loyal users. Personally, I will not stop using instagram when all my friends are the loyal users. More importantly, if the marketing team successfully implements their plan of making the ads less commercial but more like enjoyable picture, which is a brilliant idea of marketing integration without jeopardizing instagram’s awesome factors, the advertisements on newsfeed will be gradually accepted and eventually “blended in” other pictures and videos followed by the users.
Sources: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324577304579059230069305894.html#articleTabs%3Dvideo
http://money.msn.com/technology-investment/blog–instagrams-time-has-come
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-03/facebook-s-instagram-to-add-advertising-amid-revenue-push.html