Instagram Advertising Available For All Businesses!

June 8, 2015 By BJ Cook,

For a year and a half, Instagram has made their advertising platform for the VIP, the best of the best, the chosen few that were hand selected by CEO Kevin Systrom. But, as of last week, that’s all changing -- Instagram ads are becoming available to the general population of advertisers.

Why Is Instagram Advertising such a big deal?

Instagram has over 300 million active monthly users -- up from the 200 million active users it had just one year previous. With 300 million users, Instagram needed to ensure it was pleasing users and marketers alike. Things need to be made seamless and shop-able (even Pinterest joined the bandwagon this week with their “Buyable Pins”). People come to Instagram to get lost in the beauty of everything they see, to find inspiration and fashion ideas. This is the perfect place to target consumers for things they are interested in and places they want to visit.

Advertising On Instagram

With more than 2 million advertisers currently using Facebook to market their business; it was only going to be a matter of time before Instagram followed suit. Instagram will introduce an ads API over the next few months, so it can be used as in the same manner of Facebook -- for buying, managing and measuring success. For those Instagram advertisers, this will make it that much easier to expand their brand reach, virtually overnight. [caption id="attachment_8623" align="aligncenter" width="402" class=" "]

Image via blog.business.instagram.com[/caption]

Ecommerce on Instagram

Not only will you be able to target consumers by the basics of age, location and gender, but you will be able to target them based on their likes. Like Facebook, you will be able to engage with specific audiences that are interested in your brands and similar brands. This is an important ecommerce move as people want the convenience of shopping and clicking through what they are interested in. Not only will advertisers be able to market one item with a static picture, but Instagram rolled out carousel ads, which makes it that much better -- advertising multiple items and views all within the same ad. It’s almost like Instagram knew what they were doing, before it actually did it. From a user's perspective, think of how much easier it will be to learn about a brand and product. All information and the power to buy, is just one click away. [caption id="attachment_8624" align="aligncenter" width="519" class=" "]

Image via blog.business.instagram.com[/caption] We’re excited to see the development and progression of the Instagram Ad API. Facebook keeps getting better and better with their advertising platform, so we know Instagram is going to be held to the same standard. If you want help with your social media marketing, we have a savvy team, so drop us a line and let’s start Instagramming.