Photo credit: José Moutinho
Some brands have obtained significant success in reinforcing brand awareness and attaining other business results through social media marketing on Instagram. However, a preponderance of advertising may make organic marketing on the network more challenging. Some observers now worry that Instagram’s new rush to advertising could overwhelm users and diminish ad quality.
Instagram only recently opened its advertising platform to all marketers. Previously, it allowed only a few dozen brands to run ads. Facebook, which owns Instagram, announced that ads are available for purchase via Power Editor, the Instagram Ads API. Video ads can now run up to 30 seconds.
An Advertising Boom
According to Adweek, advertising vendors say their Instagram ad placements have increased substantially, in some cases doubled or triple. “I think the ad spend is going to go through the roof,” Tony Effik, managing director at R/GA, told the publication.
Up until now, top brands such as Michael Kors, Ben & Jerry’s and General Electric have created ads with outstanding quality. As advertisers pile in, ad quality may decline. Instagram users may feel buried with ads, and the user experience may suffer, especially with subpar production quality. Local businesses, which may not always produce the slickest ads, can now target users because of the network’s ample user data.
Even if ads retain quality, an increasing number of ads may decrease their effectiveness. Instagram ads for brands like Taco Bell and Capital One yielded strong brand recall in the past and click-through rates outperformed Facebook ads. That kind of performance may end.
Instagram and ad vendors say they will be careful to maintain quality and place only relevant ads before users. Their desire to maintain revenue motivates them to protect the goose that laid the golden egg.
The Top Network for Teens
Instagram says it has over 400 million monthly users, an increase of 100 million since the start of the year. They share more that 80 million photos a year, and three-fourths live outside the U.S.
A third of teenagers stated that the photo-sharing app is their most important social network, more than any other network, according to a survey by investment bank Piper Jaffray. Twitter is second, with 20 percent of teens naming it their favorite social network. Snapchat follows closely with 19 percent. Facebook is third. Only 15 percent of teens say they like it the most.
The results support the perception that teens are leaving Facebook in favor of other networks. However, other surveys report mixed findings, according to The Wall Street Journal. Pew Research reported that 41% of U.S. teens between 13 and 17 said Facebook as the site they use most frequently, followed by Instagram with 20% and Snapchat at 11%.
Instagram now has the numbers to attract major online advertisers, but resulting advertising clutter may turn off the teenagers and diminish advertising effectiveness and ROI.
Bottom Line: Advertisers are flooding into Instagram as the Facebook-owned network opens the advertising the gates to all marketers. Some observers worry that advertising quality may deteriorate and users may feel overwhelmed by ads, leading to an unfortunate erosion of the promising young network’s user experience.
William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.
