Instagram has announced plans to place ads placing ads in users’ photo streams, as the Facebook-owned photo app looks to capitalise on its growing popularity. Ads will appear in a few months in the US-only for now, and will involve just a handful of firms. In a bid not to upset its user base, the […]
Instagram has announced plans to place ads placing ads in users’ photo streams, as the Facebook-owned photo app looks to capitalise on its growing popularity.
Ads will appear in a few months in the US-only for now, and will involve just a handful of firms.
In a bid not to upset its user base, the company said that users will be able to hide ads they don’t like, then tell Instagram what they didn’t like about the ads.
In a blog post, the company said users will begin seeing “photos and videos from brands you don’t follow. We’ll focus on delivering a small number of beautiful, high-quality photos and videos from a handful of brands that are already great members of the Instagram community.
“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,” the company added.
Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom introduced Instagram video in June. Video will play a part in the company’s advertising efforts, Instagram said.
The popular phot app- made famous for its retro sepia image filters, was bought by Facebook for $1bn (£619m), but has never made a profit despite having around 150 million users.
Early efforts by Instagram to generate revenue were met with user backlash, such as when the company changed the terms of service to seemingly indicate that it would own user images and could sell those images to advertisers.
The failure of this move was acknowledged in the company’s posting.
Parent company Facebook has also boosted its efforts to gain a larger share of this ad spending.
This year, the company’s share of global mobile ad revenues will rise to 15.8% from 5.35% last year.
Read the official blog post here
