Tag: instagram

Facebook And Instagram Wrap Up Holiday Shoppers For Advertisers

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
As Black Friday draws near, Facebook and Instagram are ramping up their ad products for the upcoming holiday shopping season. In fact, the two social networks will offer advertisers and brands the option to target holiday shoppers, based on their posts and interactions with others containing holiday-related keywords. The new segment is available within Facebook self-service ad dashboards in the “Behaviors” section under the “Seasonal and Events” category. Macy’s is one of the brands that are already utilizing this new targeting option, running a holiday campaign using Instagram’s new multi-video ad format called Marquee.

What Brands Need To Do
Even though Black Friday is becoming less and less relevant due to the impact of ecommerce, holiday shopping as a whoel will still count as a big portion of retailers’ annual sales. Therefore, for brands that are interested in making a big push for holiday shoppers, this new targeting tool from Facebook may prove useful.

 

Source: Marketing Land

How Izze Hacked Instagram To Create A Gamified Experience

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Beverage brand Izze has found an interesting new way to market on Instagram. Working with Omnicom’s The Integer Group, the brand built a choose-your-own-adventure type experience on Instagram. Users tap through multiple themed accounts, each posing a question with six clickable answers in the photos that are linked to corresponding accounts using Instagram’s tagging feature. Users will eventually arrive at one of three destination accounts based on the answers they choose. Each of the endpoints represents a special holiday recipe and a link in each account bio will redirect users to a web page with links to Amazon and Pinterest, where they can buy Izze products and kitchen goods, and find the corresponding recipes.

What Brands Need To Do
Instagram has long been a favorite social channel among marketers and brands for its visual-heavy, tailored-for-mobile aesthetic. But its restriction on hyperlinks – no links in captions or comments, only one allowed for each account, save for sponsored posts with call-to-action buttons – has left some marketers frustrated, inspiring them to come up with hacks such as this new Izze campaign and a similar one launched in July for Adult Swim’s animated series Rick and Morty. For brands seeking new ways to engage their audience and move them down the sales funnel, this Izze campaign provides a great example in doing so by building a fun and interactive experience on Instagram.  

 

Source: AdWeek

Instagram Beefs Up Its Ads With 41 New Tech Partners

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
In a bid to improve its ad products, Instagram announced new partnerships with 41 new ad and marketing tech vendors, hoping to leverage their diverse offerings to complement its existing ad tools. For instance, the list of new partners includes popular mobile ad networks such as Nanigans, Adaptly, and SocialCode, which can help boost spending from advertisers that are used to planning and measuring campaigns through these platforms. Meanwhile, vendors that provide content management solutions, such as Tongal and Percolate, can help brands on Instagram ramp up their content marketing capabilities.

What Brands Need To Do
Instagram already launched its ad API this summer for ad tech firms to easily plug into its ad products, and this new partnership program will no doubt further improve its ad products and encourage more ad spending. Moreover, some tech vendors can provide new targeting options, such as a House of Blues campaign that targeted people with similar musical tastes using CitizenNet’s ad tools. If your brand is advertising or plan to advertise on Instagram, it would be smart to tap into the proprietary tools by those third-party tech vendors to figure out the most efficient ways to spend your ad dollars.

 

Source: AdWeek

Instagram Tries Content Curation And Opens Self-Serve Access To Carousel Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Taking a page out of Snapchat’s playbook, Instagram tested a Live Stories-like video content curation on Saturday, highlighting some of the best Halloween posts across its platform. Shown as a banner atop of its mobile app, U.S. users can click the prompt to see a curated video stream, stripped of the captions, likes, and comments that usually come with Instagram posts. Instagram has confirmed that this is “just the start” for this kind of event-specific UGC curation.

In related news, the photo-sharing network is also opening up access to its well-received Carousel Ads to more brands. Starting in the next few weeks, the multi-image ad unit will be available for all brands via Facebook’s self-service ad dashboards. First launched in March, Carousel Ads were the first Instagram ads that included clickable links that can direct users to destination sites outside the app.

What Brands Need To Do
According to Instagram, Carousel Ads on average drive an additional 2.5-point lift in ad recall. In particular, Ben & Jerry’s reported a 33-point increase in ad recall with Instagram ads. Offering its hottest new ad product via a self-serve interface should certainly attract more brands to try it out. Moreover, the new event-specific content curation holds great potential in becoming Instagram’s own Live Stories or Moments, potentially providing brands a new channel to surface branded content with sponsored posts or streams.

 

Source: Re/Code & Marketing Land

Instagram Gets More Serious About Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
After experimenting extensively with various ad products and formats, Instagram is now getting serious about courting TV and online advertisers with more standardized formats and buying options. After lifting the restriction on “non-square posts” last week, Instagram is now allowing brands to run 30-second-long video ads on its platform, extending the previous video runtime of 15 seconds. The company will also start rolling out its ad products to 30 more global markets such as Mexico and India, further expanding its reach.

Moreover, the photo-sharing network is also introducing a new banner-like ad format called Marquee, which, according to Instagram, aims to “help drive mass awareness and expanded reach in a short time-frame”. It will also start offer more customizable “call-to-action” buttons that appeals to a wide array of industries, including travel, entertainment, and retail, with direct response formats that can link outside of Instagram.

What Brands Should Do
As Instagram becomes more ad-friendly, brands should obviously start experiment with the new formats and learn to use each ad product to its advantages. The new Marquee buying option, for example, should be a good fit for for big product launches or movie releases where brands seek big opening sales. Moreover, brands should keep in mind that Instagram is still very much a mobile-first platform, which means that vertical videos are going to look better than the landscape ones.

 

Source: TechCrunch

 

Instagram Adds New Share And Chat Features

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Instagram introduced Instagram Direct at the end of 2013 to allow users to send private posts to each other, but the feature’s isolated placement within the app has hindered its adoption. Now with the newest update, Instagram finally overhauled the feature to give it a more “messaging-friendly” layout and allow user to share photos, locations, and even user profiles with selected friends straight from the news feed.  Previously, users had to manually input their friend’s profile handle in comments in order to share content.

What Brands Should Do
Instagram has been growing popular among brands and advertisers, thanks to its inherently visual nature and unique aesthetics. And this new makeover of Instagram Direct, which aims to facilitate easier content discovery and sharing, could lead to a higher organic exposure for branded content, with potential to go viral. Therefore, brands that are active on Instagram would be wise to take advantage of this new feature and start encouraging content sharing.

 

Source: The Verge

Instagram Finally Allows Non-Square Photos & Videos

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
After years of sticking with its signature square format for all posts, Instagram has finally added native support for photos and videos of other aspect ratios, allowing users to post vertical or horizontal posts without the unsightful margins created by third-party apps, which some used to employ in order to post uncropped photos. Brands such as New Belgium Brewing and Disney’s Star Wars were already spotted testing the new formats.

What Brands Should Do
While the loosened restriction on post format gives brands more creative freedom to deliver content without compromises, brands need to be mindful that Instagram grants much more screen space to vertical posts than horizontal ones. And given the inherent mobile nature of Instagram and that users tend to prefer a one-handed, vertical orientation, it’d be smart to choose the vertical over other formats in order to achieve maximum visual impact.

Source: AdWeek

Why Instagram’s API Is A Big Deal For Brands

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Last week, Instagram officially switched on its API for ads, making it possible for just about anyone to easily purchase ads on the photo-sharing social network. Advertisers can now buy through tools that plug directly into the network, such as Salesforce, Brand Networks, and Ampush. Previously, Instagram has been quite cautious in rolling out its ad products, selecting only a handful of brands to advertise on its platform.

What Brands Should Do
Instagram has quickly grown popular among marketers and brands for its visual-first nature and high user engagement. Its mobile ad revenue is estimated to reach $2.8 billion in 2017, potentially surpassing other digital ad giants like Twitter and Google in the U.S. market. For brands, especially those in visual-dependent verticals like fashion and cosmetics, or those seeking to reach a younger audience, that wanted to advertise on Instagram but got discouraged by its long, complicated buying process before, now is the time.

 

Source: Re/code

How Miller Lite Is Targeting Millennial Guys On Instagram

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Miller Lite is going after millennial guys on Instagram with tailored brand content that capitalizes on trending topics in font design and typography. By using hashtags such as #graphicdesign, #typography, #thedailytype, as well as age verification to rule out underage users, the beer brand is looking to connect with a specific set of Instagram users by adding a unique branded lens on the existing content trends on the photo-sharing platform.

What Brands Should Do
For brands looking into content marketing on social platforms, Miller Lite’s new campaign points to new ways to target niche audiences by utilizing the user data available to identify the trending topics and interests of the target audience, and serving them with high-quality native content that fits the bill.

 

Source: AdWeek
Image courtesy of @MillerLite on Instagram

Instagram Display Ad Sales Soon To Overtake Google And Twitter

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
According to a new eMarketer report, Instagram is set to generate $2.81 billion in ad sales by 2017, making it bigger than Google and Twitter in terms of U.S. display ad sales. Such an optimistic projection is no doubt fueled by Instagram’s efforts in making its platform more brand-friendly in the past few months, including debuting new “Carousel” multi-photo ad unit with clickable links, launching its first official content vertical, and retooling its search and explore page to offer brands more ad opportunities. Its inherently visual platform also grants brands a natural environment for native ads, while its parent company Facebook presumably provides a strong data support for targeting and measurements.

What Brands Should Do
With the increasing usage of ad-blocking extension, we have long advised brands to look into native advertising to bypass the blocking for higher engagements and better viewability. In this ever-shifting market landscape, quickly adopting emerging ad platforms is becoming increasingly important for brands of all types.

 

Source: AdWeek