Tag: instagram

Retargeting Ads Come To Instagram

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Advertisers on Instagram are now able to retarget users as the social network adds Dynamic Ads – a retargeting unit that Facebook launched last year – to its platform. This ad product enables data-driven ad customization so that users are served relevant ads based on their online activity and interests. Facebook is also rolling out two updates to its ad products: a Dynamic Ad unit specifically designed for travel brands and more control on its “lookalike” custom audiences so that advertisers can prioritize different types of users to focus on.

What Brands Need To Do
Instagram has been following the steps of its parent company Facebook in improving its ad products and making its platform more brand-friendly. The photo- and video-sharing network currently serves over 200,000 monthly active advertisers. This new addition should be helpful to brands, especially those in the travel sector, for reaching target consumers more effectively on Instagram.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Instagram Starts Testing Business Accounts For Brands

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Instagram is about to become a lot more brand-friendly as the social network starts testing the business accounts it teased back in March. The new business accounts come with several useful features that distinguish a brand’s profile page from regular accounts, including a Contact button placed next to the Follow button to encourage users to initiate communication via email, a label under the account name categorizing the businesses by type, and access to maps to direct users to a store location.

What Brands Need To Do
By all accounts, the new business accounts on Instagram bear a striking resemblance to the Brand Pages on Facebook. This should not come as a surprise, as Instagram has been following the steps of its parent company Facebook to build out its ad products and make its platform more appealing to brands. Instagram currently serves over 200,000 advertisers, yet many have found the platform frustrating to use due to the restriction on links it imposes and the limited interactive features it offers. Business accounts should provide brands with a good tool to remedy those drawbacks and convert more customers on Instagram.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Header picture courtesy of Later.com

Instagram Now Supports Videos In Carousel Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Instagram launched a clickable Carousel Ad unit over a year ago, allowing brands to showcase their products with three to five still images in a single promoted post. Now, brands can cram multiple videos into one Carousel Ad, as the company doubles down on its quest for video ad spending. Airbnb, Macy’s, and Taco Bell are among the first brands to try out the new multi-video format.

What Brands Need To Do
Following the steps of its parent company Facebook, Instagram has been making a strong push for video ads in recent months. It revamped its Explore tab to add “Recommended Video Feeds” last month to encourage more video views and extended the length limit of video ads to one minute in February. By allowing videos in Carousel Ads, Instagram enables brand advertisers to craft a narrative with multiple videos to engage with consumers without cluttering their timelines. For brands that wish to capture attention on Instagram with their video ads, this new update to Carousel Ads should come as a welcome addition.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Interactive Video Ads Are Coming To Facebook And Instagram

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Soon brands will be able to engage Facebook and Instagram users with interactive video ads thanks to a beta program launched by video marketing firm Innovid today. British tea and coffee brand Taylors of Harrogate ran a campaign last December to test the format on Facebook with some positive results. The 30-second video ad invited desktop viewers to tap on an embedded button to pull up an overlaid window where they could take a branded quiz, purchase featured products, and sign up for newsletters. Mobile viewers will be able to click on the videos to open a webpage where they can enjoy the same interactive experience.

What Brands Need To Do
According to research by the IAB, interactive video ads drive higher brand lift than non-interactive ones and boast an 8% lift in purchase intent. Similarly, a 2015 study from Innovid which measured global impressions delivered to desktop browsers via its platform in 2014, also found that interactive video ads outperformed standard pre-rolls across almost all metrics. By making its interactive video ads compatible with Facebook and Instagram videos, Innovid is opening up new opportunities for brands to more effectively engage with consumers on social media. Brands should consider trying out this new format to step up their video ad game and move consumers down the sales funnel.

 

Source: AdWeek

How Starwood “Hacked” Instagram To Take Hotel Reservations

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Starwood Hotels hacked Instagram to allow socially connected travelers to initiate the booking process right in the photo-sharing app. Working with digital shopping platform LiketoKnow.it, Starwood allows users to start booking a reservation simply by liking one of the Instagram photos that the hotel chain paid social influencers for. Once they double-tap, they receive an auto-generated email via LiketoKnow.it with a link to book their stay at the hotel chain’s two featured properties in Paris.

What Brands Need To Do
Among popular social media services, Instagram has been notoriously hard for marketers to crack, largely due to its restriction on clickable links. Save for the call-to-action buttons in ads and the one URL allowed in each account profile, brands have no viable means to move Instagram followers down the sales funnel. Starwood’s effort here provides a new example of how brands can find innovative ways to circumvent Instagram’s restrictions and convert followers into customers.

 

Source: Digiday

Instagram To Ramp Up Video Views With Recommended Video Feeds

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
In its latest update released on Thursday, Instagram overhauled its Explore tab with a slew of new video channels. Among them is a personalized “Videos You Might Like” feed that draws recommended video posts from across the network based on user data. There are also staff-curated, themed channels, for example one for Coachella, and feature spotlights on content creators and Instagram communities, all in hopes of attracting more users to its growing video content.

What Brands Need To Do
Facebook has been making a strong play for video for the past few years, and Instagram has recently started following its parent company’s steps in ramping up its video efforts as well. Just two weeks ago, Instagram extended its maximum video length from 15 seconds to 60 seconds for all users, hoping to encourage more video posts. With video quickly becoming a preferred format for brands to engage consumers across social platforms, it is imperative that brands and ad buyers be aware of the social video channels and use them to reach their growing audiences.

 

Source: AdWeek

TubeMogul To Help Brands Extend TV Audience Targeting To Social Media

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Using Facebook’s API and TV viewer data from Nielsen, TubeMogul’s programmatic platform now allows brand advertisers to buy targeted video ads on Facebook and Instagram that reach the same kind of audiences they’re targeting on TV. Brands including Expedia, Lenovo Australia, and Kraft ran campaigns in TubeMogul’s closed beta test with positive results. Brands will be able to measure campaign results with metrics such as likes, comments, shares, video completion rates, purchase intent, and sentiment.

What Brands Need To Do
As live TV viewership continues to be eroded by the large amount of content now available on digital video and social channels, it is getting increasingly difficult for brands to reach most of their target audience with TV ads alone. In this regard, this new targeting capability from TubeMogul can be of great help for brands to extend their TV ad’s reach to find their target audiences on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Source: AdWeek

Algorithmic Feed And Longer Videos Coming To Instagram

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Instagram is ch-ch-ch-changing. The Facebook-owned, photo-sharing social network has started testing an algorithm-based feed. Instead of showing posts in reverse-chronological order, the posts will be rearranged based on their importance and popularity determined by an algorithm. The new feed is expected to roll out to all users in the coming weeks.

In related news, Instagram is also extending its video length from the previous 15-second limit to 60 seconds, giving users and content creators more space to showcase their videos. Previously, the company increased the length limit of its video ads from 30 seconds to 60 seconds.

What Brands Need To Do
It is likely that this change to Instagram’s feed will have the same impact on reach for brand posts as similar changes have meant to Facebook’s News Feed. Those changes at Instagram’s parent led to lower organic reach as Facebook further monetized their platform. While brand posts on Instagram can be as popular and successful as any other, it appears that we may have reached the peak of organic reach. Brands can encourage users to turn on post notifications for their accounts to stay informed, as many influencers have been doing. The increased video length can help familiarize users with longer videos on Instagram, which should be a good news for brands trying to engage viewers with video ads on Instagram.

 

Source: CNET & The Verge

 

Instagram To Follow Facebook’s Playbook In Ad Products

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
In an interview with Re/code, a spokesperson for Instagram revealed its plan to build out its ad products to make its platform more brand-friendly. Taking multiple pages out of Facebook’s playbook, the photo-sharing social network is said to be expanding its tools for marketers including profiles for businesses similar to Facebook’s Pages, additional measurement data on all posts whether they are paid or not, and the ability to buy ads via a mobile device.

What Brands Need To Do
Throughout last year, Instagram ramped up its efforts to court brand advertisers, introducing several new ad products and targeting tools that use Facebook’s data. In January, the Facebook-owned photo-sharing app announced that it had hit 200,000 advertisers, which is more than Twitter has. As Instagram becomes more ad-friendly, brands that are seeing positive results from their Facebook campaigns should certainly try out what Instagram has to offer as well.

 

Source: Re/code

 

Instagram To Start Showing Video Views

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Instagram is starting to display video views as it revs up for more video ads. Starting Thursday, select accounts on the popular photo-sharing network now show how many times their videos has been viewed at where the “likes” used to be (users can still click through to see the like counts), with global rollout planned for the following weeks. This marks the latest change the Facebook-owned platform has been making to make it more brand-friendly. Last week, it extended the length of video ads from 30 seconds up to one minute.

Instagram view count

What Brands Need To Do
Although this may seem like a fairly small tweak, displaying view counts can be a kind of morale booster for brands publishing videos on Instagram – video boasts a huge number of views may encourage more people to give it a look. Moreover, this change can help the popular video creators stand out, making it easier for brands to discover and evaluate the social influencers to work with via content partnerships or product placements.

One thing that brands need to keep in mind when it comes to video ads on Instagram is that it follows Facebook’s viewability criteria that counts three seconds of playback as a view. To learn more about the impact of viewing time on ad effectiveness, be sure to check out our new Viewability study here.

 

Source: AdWeek

Image courtesy of Instagram Blog