What Happened
Instagram continues to push its Snapchat-inspired Stories feature as it adds a curated Stories feed to the Explore tab of its apps. Now users can flip through a stream of Stories suggested based on their interests. Previously, users would only see Stories from people they follow. Instagram says more than 100 million people visit Explore every day to discover photos and videos from people they don’t yet follow.
Why Brands Should Care
Since its launch in August, Instagram Stories has been a moderate success with users as the feature is viewed by one-third of Instagram’s 300 million daily users. While there’s no word on how Instagram plans to monetize the feature, it is only a matter of time before Instagram starts adding ads in between Stories like the way Snapchat inserts video ads in between snaps. Moreover, this introduction of a curated Stories feed opens up the opportunity for brands to surface their Stories to a wider audience.
Source: Instagram Blog