Instagram has begun rolling out 15 second paid ads to your photo feed or within videos posted up on the photo social sharing site.
This initiative has been in testing for the last 6 months, with Instagram’s parent, Facebook Inc, signing up Disney, Activision, Lancome, Banana Republic and CW companies within the USA to play their own paid ads within your social news feed within Instagram.
One ad Disney is promoting is its new film, Big Hero 6, with a video showing animated characters posing as if they were taking selfies.
Anthy Price, SVP of media at Disney has stated that they are excited about video and said “We felt like we wanted to step up in a big way for Big Hero 6”.
Brian Chang, Assistant VP of Media at Lancome USA has said “It wasn’t a hard decision for us,” and that “We, as a brand, wanted to take advantage of being first to market”. Lancome is promoting a new fragrance and mascara, so could we see more related selfies for these products popping up alongside these ads? Who knows.
This move really hasn’t been a surprise really, as its parent company, Facebook has recently done the same thing with users news feeds, playing video ads and more products ads from companies who have signed up. Tumblr and Snapshot have also gone down this road and it certainly seems video ads are here to stay and even increase in the short term.
It remains to be seen how this will effect the users feeds or if users will embrace this move, but being that the service is free, this is an extra way for company to grab cash for injection into additional server space or better design to say the least.
Are you an Instagram user? Would these paid 15-second ads affect you or are you not bother by this move by instagram?
Perhaps Instagram should change their name to honestly reflect what their new policy is.
Adstagrab