Is your brand using Instagram?
Instagram has become one of the most popular social networks, which allows mobile photo and video sharing. Users can share these photos and videos with their friends on a variety of other platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Recently, Instagram reported that the social platform hit 300 million active users.
Brands today are taking advantage of the social network by creating interesting content and ways to tell their story. The most exciting statistic for brands is that the engagement rate is higher than any other platform. As marketers, we want fans and followers to engage with our brand. Instagram users who like, comment and re-gram, have an engagement rate of 3.1%, while Twitter and Facebook have a .07% engagement rate and below.
With number likes these, brands have been wanting access to Instagram audiences. However, brands have only been able to reach Instagram audiences by posting fresh content, commenting, sharing and liking consumer posts. In 2012, Facebook bought Instagram and for the past three years has been working on creating the perfect advertising mix.
As of June 2015, the network announced that Instagram’s API has been released, and select brands could begin to pay for sponsored posts. These sponsored posts are much like Facebook’s boosted posts. Each post is served with a call-to-action button including Shop Now, Learn More and Install Now. When the ad is clicked on it will take the user to a mini-app within Instagram, rather than a brand’s website. After a consumer has shopped, learned or installed, they immediately return to Instagram.
Instagram sponsored updates are currently being rolled out and are not available to everyone yet. On their blog, Instagram explained:
“Instagram ads will be available to advertisers of all types later this year. We are currently testing self-serve buying interfaces and APIs with a small group of partners, and we expect to make them more widely available over the coming months.”
Once these ads are available to all businesses, it will be a huge way for advertisers to gain consumer information and expand their leads. The data that Facebook offers will play a significant part is targeting a qualified audience. Instagram is in the process of creating exciting and new features for the advertising placements when it is rolled out to the public.
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NewMedia Digital is a digital creative and branding agency dedicated to helping brands reach new heights with creative solutions that generate performance driven ROI.
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