This past Tuesday, Instagram announced a new sponsored content option that will allow brands to promote native posts from creators as advertisements, making it easier than ever to promote content beyond an influencer’s reach. The ads will appear with a Sponsored label, including a Paid partnership tag and the name of the participating brand.
“Branded content ads” – as they’ve been dubbed – solve several challenges in the current branded content workflow. Per Instagram’s release, the change was among those most frequently requested from businesses.
An Open Look:
This development is a major win-win for brands, marketing agencies, and influencers alike. It opens another avenue for maximizing ROI when promoting an influencer’s content outside of their followers and to a more targeted audience.
Brands and advertising partners can currently pay to promote sponsored content, but the process requires several steps of authorization and logistics. The new functionality presents a streamlined option for boosting posts to new consumers – and takes all the guesswork out of FTC compliance.
“This new feature is a great next step, especially in regards to increased transparency in the space,” said Open Influence Senior Account Manager Taylor Alderson. “There are a few ways to tackle FTC compliance, but branded content ads solve this problem and help with industry standardization.”
Instagram also took the time to highlight a recent study commissioned by parent company Facebook – specifically, that 68% of users come to the platform to interact with creators. Such impressive stats are exactly why brands are ramping up their influencer marketing budgets worldwide, and this update reflects Instagram’s deep investment in the brand/creator dynamic.
This improvement is just the latest in an ongoing slew of upgrades from the tech giant. Instagram may have been a first mover in the influencer space, but they remain focused on responding to ever-changing market needs . As they put it themselves – “branded content is an evolving ecosystem.”
We’re extremely excited by the new feature, and can’t wait to see what else is on the horizon.
