“Be Always Pool Ready”, Pepsi #Summergram, Swipe Up!
This summer Pepsi took over Instagram by storm with its amazing digital ad campaign and lured its wide pool of fans on social media. Another one of the influential campaigns #BodyProudMums by Mothercare focused on real problems faced by mothers post-childbirth became one of the impactful campaigns of the first quarter of 2019. Not just Pepsi or Mothercare, but hundred other brands like Swiggy, Zomato, NatGeo advertised this year through various features on Instagram which grabbed eyeballs and induced potential customers to swipe up.
When Instagram announced its full-screen immersive ads coming on Insta stories in 2017, it transformed the way businesses spend on a digital advertisement. Instagram offered the biggest advantage to advertisers by letting them use targeting and reach capabilities that make each advert personally relevant to the target audience. That, paired with measurement tools gives the confidence to know that it works, and the result is unmatched in a stories experience. Today, businesses of all sizes are leveraging Insta stories to promote their products and elevate brand awareness through humorous, creative and unusual styles.
Rise of Insta Ads
An increasing number of marketers are investing a bigger budget on social advertising every day. The growing usage in advertising has led to significant growth of Insta stories ads in the past few quarters. Kenshoo’s latest report revealed that there has been a 24 percent increase in impressions from last year and a 37 percent increase in spending from Q2 of 2018. The spending has even increased by 7% from the last quarter, which indicates the growing interest in social advertising as an effective marketing tactic.
Instagram stories give an edge over to brands as the reach can be easily tracked by the advertisers. And brands are leaving no stone unturned in making use of the social platform that has more than 2 million monthly active users. One of the most important benefits for the advertisers and brands is the reach optimization. Brands can show your adverts to the maximum number of people in your audience and control how often they see your adverts.
A strong presence of bloggers and influencers on Instagram has cultivated the growth of advertising business making social media platform, the most preferable medium to advertise. Every day Insta story ads by the brands lead users to their Insta page and website, which is working out well for most. In fact, a study by Omnicom’s Group Cone Communications, 70% of millennials are willing to spend more with brands that support causes or operate with a model that resonates with their own values.
What 2020 Holds?
Instagram has become such a powerful sales machine for brands with more than one billion potential customers. For marketers and business owners, this means an opportunity to reach out to their target audience, spread a word about their product, and turn followers into customers.
The future of ads on Instagram lies in Instagram TV (IGTV) after story format. The inception of Instagram TV brought a huge change in the consumption of content on Instagram. Considering the capped time limit for videos, IGTV comes up as an added advantage for advertisers for extended ad experience.
Today, people are interacting more and more meaningfully with brands on their mobile devices—and they increasingly want to do so in a format that is easy, convenient, and engrossing. Vertical, full-screen video is ideal for that type of content consumption. As per the Instagram blog, one out of three of the most-viewed stories is from brands or native content that has proven to provide its great results for digital marketers.
IGTV could be an easy and cheap alternative to extend this format for advertisers once the real-time monetization starts on it by Facebook. A high-quality, polished content on story ads is the easy way out to captivate your audience. There are a lot of unique metrics that need to be analyzed in order to improve the campaign’s visibility, which will be seen in no time.