It may not come as a surprise that Instagram has announced the launch of paid ads on its Stories feature. The roll out marks the brand's first foray into full screen ads that will run as 15 second videos or photos that last for five seconds. Both are instantly skippable.
The company announced yesterday that it will be testing the ads with around 30 global advertisers including Airbnb, Netflix, Maybelline New York and Qantas. According to AdNews, pairing with a wide variety of brands will allow Instagram to identify which categories get the best results using the Stories' ad unit.
Keeping in line with when they launched ads on their main feed, Instagram will just be offering Stories ads based around reach objective (i.e. advertisers looking to reach a certain amount of women living in Australia aged between 18-30, for example) but will soon expand that to other outcomes. This will include statistics on user action like swiping up to visit a website or download an app.
Instagram's director of market operations Jim Squires told Fast Company that 70 per cent of people follow businesses on Instagram and that a third of the most viewed Stories are also from businesses. To that end, the company will now include analytics about Stories, including metrics such as reach, impressions and replies, in its Business Tools dashboard.
