Instagram revealed its plan to roll out photo and video ad of high quality to US users. Apart from some critics about this decision, it is not surprise at all considering that Instagram is a large-user-base product of Facebook whose advertising revenue weighs a lot.
This reminds me of Twitter’s increasing reliance on advertisers. As revealed by its IPO filings, over half of the revenue is from advertising, while it aims to have new ad formats in order to expand its foothold in the competition for advertisers.
However, sometimes businesses focus too much on expanding revenue and profits to pay attention to users experience. Ad with bad or incongruous contents and design, or too much ad can easily rouse users’ rage and push users to competitors, which would be an act of “committing suicide” with no doubt. Facebook, for example, once faced the backlash from users due to too much in-feed ad.
Therefore, keeping a delicate balance among user experience, company’s goal (most of time is to increase profits), and the brand value position, appeals to be a way forward.
http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/news/instagram-to-slowly-roll-out-advertising/4008121.article