Every day, half of Instagram’s daily audience checks out Instagram stories, a product that is a clone of Snapchat’s Stories. Since replicating Snapchat’s product, Instagram Stories has matched Snapchat’s daily viewers. With the rapid rise in viewers, it was only a matter of time before Instagram started incorporating ads into their Stories.
Soon, Instagram will start showing photo and video ads in between users’ stories. Currently only 30 companies around the world have the ability to advertise on Instagram Stories. In the United States, companies such as Airbnb, L’Oreal, McDonald’s, & Nike have been granted advertising rights. Throughout the upcoming weeks, advertising will be made available for all advertisers using Facebook’s Power Editor Ad-Buying tool.
The advertisements within Instagram Stories will only play while a user swipes from one story to the next, and will have a “sponsored” label on the bottom. Users will also be able to skip advertisements like a normal story slide. Advertisers will have the option of running video ad up to 15 seconds or a photo ad, both will take up the entire screen.
Companies with a business profile on Instagram, will be able to see post data using Instagram’s analytics tool. Businesses will be able to see:
• Number of impressions each slide received
• Number of people it reached
• Number of people who clicked “reply” to send a message to the business
• Number of people who stopped watching the business’s story after seeing their slide.
Businesses will be able to see these stats for a 24-hour period, the last seven days, and the last 14 days. Links within an ad will not be trackable for some time, although Instagram is considering adding this feature in the future.