What are Instagram ads?

Part of Meta’s ad network, Instagram also offers various engaging formats that you can use to market your brand and its product range. It supports Catalog Ads through formats like Stories and collection ads, letting brands showcase product visuals in visually rich, native ways. In addition to its variety of formats, Instagram ads also offer precise targeting and insights, helping you to reach prospective customers and track the performance of your ads. 

Different Instagram ads formats

• Single images which appear in square, landscape, or vertical format.

• Videos which appear in square or landscape format.

• Carousel which appears in square or vertical format in feed and in Stories.

• Flexible where it will choose whether image, video, or carousel will generate the best response.

  

How does ad placement work on Instagram?

With Instagram ads, your ads can appear in users’ feed, Stories, Explore, Reels, and Shops. When you create your ad in the Meta Ads Manager, you’ll be able to select the placements for your ads. For example, when you use Meta Advantage+, it will choose placements that will maximise your ad’s delivery and your budget. 

Which ad objectives does Instagram offer?

Instagram ads can be created for a wide range of ad goals. The objectives from which you can choose are:

• Brand awareness

• Traffic

• Engagement

• Leads

• App promotion

• Sales

What are the benefits of Instagram ads?

Huge, engaged audience

Instagram remains one of the most popular social media platforms. When you advertise on Instagram, you can potentially reach more than two billion active users. 

Visual-first platform

Unlike Facebook, Instagram places a lot of emphasis on visuals. This makes it great for advertising products. Using lifestyle photos to showcase your products will fit in naturally, helping you to create an emotional connection with shoppers and show off product benefits. 

Advanced targeting

Instagram uses the same powerful targeting as Facebook. You can, for example, use custom audiences, lookalike audiences, geo-targeting, and interests, making it a powerful platform to find new customers who fit your target audience or retarget to those who’ve shown interest. 

Seamless shopping experience

Instagram offers native features like shoppable posts, product tags, and Instagram Shop. These features reduce friction in the customer journey, allowing users to go from discovery to purchase without having to leave the app.