User:Yueningma/sandbox

Instagram containing advertising

Within two years since the Instagram had launched in 2010, it didn’t have any revenue. In 2012, the Facebook company purchased Instagram, which is regarded as a tricky behavior for the public. However, from then on, the revenue of Instagram start a new stage.

In 2013, Instagram started their revenue of paid advertising for 10 brands, which includes Michael Kors, Burberry, Adidas and others. Within nine days after the advertisements posted on Instagram, more than 7.4 billion people aged 18 to 24 years old watched Levi's advertisement. Facebook on Thursday announced that according to their market results, the advertisement recall of Ben & Jerry's and Levi's increased by 32%, which means that people who viewed the advertisements on Instagram are more likely to remember these bands than those who didn’t. Meanwhile, for publishing the advertisement content for them, Instagram can own all the revenue.

The brands can create an anthropomorphic account and post the advertisement in their daily contents. Also, Instagram marketers sponsored the IT GIRLS or celebrities products who can post these products on their pages to attract their fans to buy them. For example, Levi’s corporates with popular fashion bloggers on the Instagram for new collections.

To help the advertisers reach the target customers, in 2015 Instagram started to use the photo- sharing service which the Facebook bought in 2012. Instagram can find certain customer group according to their gender, hobbies, college and interests. In the winter, the Instagram announced that they will corporate with Facebook, and make the Instagram ads available for all sizes of brands to use.

In August 2016, Instagram introduced a new advertisement mode called Instagram Stories. Instagram Stories are 15 seconds “full- screen ads” served for advertisers. This new format can make the audience feel just like being personally on the screen which can receive more like, comment and share from viewers. Marketers using Instagram Stories can decide which group of audience can see this news and how often to make sure that the advertisement can be sent to the potential customers. Over 30 brands such as L’Oréal, Bacardi, McDonald’s and Wendy’s are trying to use Instagram Stories for product promotion. For example, Airbnb used a range of Stories in Instagram to describe the experiences of consumers living in the Airbnb. The ad recall of company experienced double- digital point growth after posting the videos on Instagram Stories. Also, during some survey, the Airbnb brand awareness of the tourists is higher than other competitors. Apart from the vertical videos, Instagram permitted marketers to show users outside websites which are their own pages. And the spokesman of Instagram also claimed that the clickable link can just be used by the publishers which means that regular users can’t use this function. James Quarles who is the Instagram business’s vice president thinks highly of the Instagram stories ads. He notes that in 2016, 33% of the most popular stories were generated by the advertisers, which also showed the increasing public acceptation about the Instagram advertising.

In Mar 2017, Instagram announced that they have 1 million active advertisers every month. Now the Instagram has already become a strong and new business. The eMarketer forecasts that the Instagram will earn 600 million dollars in 2017 for their advertisement sales. As Wall street bank predicts, by 2017 the revenue of Instagram can reach 2 billion dollars.