The People vs. Instagram Ads

It’s no question that Instagram is social media’s “white whale” for advertisers. With the number of users growing by the second and a gargantuan millennial bandwagon than trumps that of any other social platform, marketers have been scrambling to capitalize on the photo-sharing app’s staggering consumer growth.

With limited ad capabilities, brands took to influencer marketing in order to identify and tap into their targeted demographics and their potential buying behaviors. When retail brands would outfit closely followed fashion bloggers in the hottest item that season, it was easy to see the correlation between the photo post and the item flying off shelves. But influencer marketing lacked the sophistication and depth of a true ad campaign where cost-per-click and conversion rates could only be estimated at best.

All that changed a couple months ago, when Instagram rolled out its offer for a mainstream and more robust ad solution. Providing more brands with the option of a quick-click direct response button (similar to Facebook’s Call-to-Action tabs, with directives like “Shop Now,” “Install Now” and “Sign Up”) and a much more focused targeting model, Instagram is at long last poised to host a fully functional ad campaign.

What will this mean for the influencer network that brands have built? Will Instagram’s new ads model render them obsolete? An article in Ad Week says not necessarily, there’s room in Instagram’s monetizing universe for both. Determining which form of marketing campaign to use depends, as it does on any platform, on what the objective is.

The article states, “The first question to ask yourself is what do you want to achieve? Brand awareness? Customer engagement? More followers of a certain type? Drive traffic to points of purchase? The answer to this question ultimately drives your marketing decision.”

The objective will highly influence the approach brands should take, with the general consensus being ads as the most efficient tool for quantity and number of impressions, while influencers provide value for brand awareness, relationship building, and lead generation.

Other factors for brands to consider? What the higher currency is, brand awareness versus affinity and actual currency in terms of cost. Instagram influencers can rake in millions for a sponsored ‘gram, but Quora has claimed that the price of Instagram ads could figure between $350,000 and $1 million per month.

Bottomline: You can filter it all you want, but brands will be shelling out a pretty penny to stay competitive in the Instagram advertising game.

Read the full article form Ad Week here.