Right as Twitter filed its S-1 with the SEC on its way to an IPO, Instagram has quietly revealed its launch plan for ads. The company will be introducing “a small number of beautiful, high-quality photos and videos from a handful of brands that are already great members of the Instagram community” in the coming months, with the United States as the first region to see them.
The company, which is owned wholly by Facebook and boasts 150 million active users, plans to grow “into a sustainable business,” and is trying to soften the blow of its ad introduction by ensuring they will be tasteful and mercifully irregular. Twitter has done the same thing with its mobile apps, inserted sponsored posts sporadically into the feed.
Our aim is to make any advertisements you see feel as natural to Instagram as the photos and videos many of you already enjoy from your favorite brands. After all, our team doesn’t just build Instagram, we use it each and every day. We want these ads to be enjoyable and creative in much the same way you see engaging, high-quality ads when you flip through your favorite magazine.
Instagram users will be able to hide ads they don’t like and, like on Hulu, feedback can be given as to why an ad was disliked. The company is also stressing that users “own [their] photos and videos… the introduction of advertising won’t change this.”
Good to know, we suppose.
[source]Instagram[/source]
