By adaptive - November 13th, 2013

Ads on Instagram are here. Marketers now have a new channel to engage with customers, but care should be taken to avoid ad blindness

One of the first ads on Instagram has appeared, and according to engagement stats, the ad was a massive success. Coming from Michael Kors the ad showed a watch amongst a number of cakes. Not what you would call the most inspiring of campaign mechanics, but research from Nitrogram showed that the post generated a massive 33,000 new followers for the brand. Also, the ad created 370% more Likes and was seen by over six million people within 18 hours of the image appearing.

Michael Kors Instagram Ad

At the announcement that ads would be coming to this expanding social media network, the company stated: “We want ads to be creative and engaging, so we’re starting with just a handful of brands that are already great members of the Instagram community. If you see an ad that doesn’t interest you, you can tap the “…” below it to hide it and provide feedback about what you didn’t like. This will help us show you more interesting ads in the future.

“Our focus with every product we build is to make Instagram a place where people come to connect and be inspired. Building Instagram as a business will help us better serve the global—and ever growing—Instagram community, while maintaining the simplicity you know and love.”

Commenting on the Michael Kors stats Nitrogram said: “Engagement on the post was almost four times higher than what Michael Kors is used to seeing. We compared the ad’s engagement with that of the last five non-promoted posts made from the official @michaelkors account. An important note: all recent posts by Michael Kors were featured on Instagram’s popular page, while the sponsored one wasn’t.

“While the number of Likes was high, not all engagement on the sponsored post was cheerful. This is no news: Instagram users took to the post’s comments to express their displeasure with 20% of comments were phrased with a negative structure while only a negligible amount of users showed their support. Amid this expected backlash, 1% of the comments or almost 20 people expressed a clear purchase intent.”

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom has recently and publically stated that he expects a wave of negative sentiment against their moves to commercialise the platform. Speaking at the Gigaom Roadmap conference, Systrom said: “Ads on Instagram should feel like they should be on Instagram. We always want to be sure the community has a voice.”

What is clear is that Instagram have been watching how Facebook have been developing as a commercial company. With recent buoyant sales figures, Facebook seems to have turned a corner – something that Instagram are keen to emulate yet offer their own unique take on how ads can be presented.

Systrom continued: “We always saw Instagram less as a photo company than a communications company. We saw photos as messages, videos as messages. That hasn’t really changed. We still focus on making photos beautiful and making them quick and easy to share.”

For brand owners looking for the next ad platform for their messages, Instagram will be high on their list of social networks to include in future ad campaigns. Corporations should though, take a step back and look closely at how the social media environment is shifting.

A study from Social Chorus showed that a paltry 6% of millennials find online ads credible, and more worrying that over 80% think ads on social networks makes the experience worse. This clearly gives weight to why this group seem to be leaving Facebook since its IPO.

Social Chorus say: “Being the digitally savvy, tech-natives that they are, millennials strongly dislike advertising. This generation has perfected the art of avoiding and tuning out advertising – especially in social channels. So long are the days of traditional advertising when brands could push out messages to the masses. Not only are brands’ messages no longer trusted, millennials have gotten so good at ignoring brand advertisements that they don’t even notice them. Marketers need to find new ways to engage and connect with millennials.”

Facebook Ads

What is clear is that if the millennials are turned off by ads, understanding what turns them on across the social space is vital marketing insight. It seems that overt ads are shunned, which isn’t surprising. Whereas, recommendations from their networks can be highly effective. What Instagram is showing is that brands need to further develop their advocates. These groups will be far more effective at communicating ad messages than the ads themselves. Michael Kors has clear success with their ad, but considering ads and the social space as a wider market reveals that a more intelligent and subtle approach is need to ensure marketing messages reach their intended audiences.

Social Chorus recommends: “This generation wants to communicate with everyone and brands are no exception. Brands must make them feel like their voices are being heard. They want to share their experiences – so brands should allow them to do so. When brands arm millennials with content and make it easy to share, they will happily share their experiences with their friends and networks.”

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