Instagram’s first autoplay Video Ads are here
It took six months of testing for Instagram’s video ads option to be fully functional and available to advertisers. The social website, that’s a subsidiary of Facebook, will provide autoplay ad spots that have a 15-second legnth. The first advertisers are CW, Lancome, Activision, Disney and Banana Republic. The advertisements were launched just a few days ago and will start popping up in the following weeks.
Instagram likes to keep close track of the advertisements served on its site as they did 2013, when the static ads were first introduced. So expect all video ads to be reviewed by staff so that only original and fresh content is featured in and not just rip-offs from TV or web commercials. The restrictions will probably be loosened over time as ad type becomes more popular.
Video marketing is becoming more and more important in the mobile environment and, as expected, competition is getting harsher, considering that Snapchat and Tumblr have also launched similar ad services. To these, we add Instagram’s owner, Facebook, which started the trend and is now surpassing YouTube for most desktop video views per month.
At the moment, targeting tools for these ads are rather basic: advertisers have the option to target people based on their country, gender or age. But this is just the beginning – as things evolve, options will certainly become more and more complex. Check out some of the first Instagram video ads:
Lancome will come to Instagram with mascara and fragrance advertisements. They had a bit more tedious task to accomplish and the video specialists behind the ad had to hurry up things during the last week. Activison however, advertises Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and they had several months to come up with something great.
Activision’s Instragram ad features a 15-second cut from a longer trailer presented a couple of days ago on Facebook. The company knows that users are more and more present in the mobile environment and marketing here becomes quite important. It is expected for the ad to have an initial reach of 2 million users, with potentially more of them as the ad is shared.
Banana Republic, on the other hand, goes behind the scenes with its ads. Sketches of fashion items for the holiday season are presented in a way made popular by Hyperlapse, Instagram’s first stand-alone app.
