According to a Wall Street Journal story, Facebook’s Instagram will be ready to sell ads within the next year. The report quotes Facebook veteran and Instagram director of business operations Emily White, who says the photo- and video-based social network doesn’t have any short-term pressure to make money.
Instagram, which just announced that its community boasts more than 150 million users (50 million joined the social network in the last six months), has long been expected to welcome ads into its ecosystem. The expectation was even more intriguing when reports of 15-second video ads hitting Facebook surfaced. (Instagram added 15-second videos to its platform back in June.)
The WSJ report notes the obvious threat that Instagram’s coveted user base of teens and young adults won’t like the inclusion of ads in their experience and that ads might clutter the environment. It’s worth noting that Instagram users showed their willingness to voice their displeasure with unfavorable changes to the social network when the company tried to make changes to its privacy policy and terms of service late last year.
In an interview with Fast Company published back in June, Instagram CEO and co-founder, Kevin Systrom, said “traditional forms of advertising” wouldn’t be seen on his creation. He also shared his admiration for Google AdWords: “The ads are often as good as or better than the content.”
White was also quoted in that article, saying that spammy ads would be destructive for Instagram and that Vogue magazine could be a model to follow, one that features ads as alluring as the content.
Instagram should already be on many marketers’ radars, at the very least. The addition of ads would boost the platform’s appeal.
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