Instagram to start running ads in 2014
by Ben Romberg | 10.09.2013
Instagram’s director of business operations, Emily White, made the announcement that ads will be run on the platform yesterday in a Wall Street Journal article. From the start, the app has been free to download and use, but now the app (recently bought by Facebook) will start to run ads on its predominantly mobile-based platform to prove the worth of the billion-dollar acquisition.
The company with the mission of capturing and sharing the world’s “Kodak moments” needs to figure out a way to make those ads visible and monetisable among its 150 million-plus users without risking a mass exodus. Since instagram experienced a huge gain of 128 million monthly active users since Facebook bought the company, the potential reach of advertisers on the platform has grown dramatically, especially as many of the networks functions have been integrated across both.
The challenge to Instagram is to make the service valuable to advertisers without losing users. How this will work and what the integration of ads will look like remains to be seen.
