Advertising on Instagram – what is it and how to create it?

Instagram is growing in popularity every year. Currently, this platform boasts more than two billion monthly active users. As a result, many brands are starting to see the potential in promoting their businesses through this application. 

Ads on Instagram – for whom?

Many people ask themselves whether their business suits them to advertise on Instagram. Wanting to answer this question, it is worth noting at the outset what audience primarily uses this platform. After all, young users dominate on Instagram. These are primarily people between the ages of 18 and 34, and this group now accounts for more than 60% of the total audience on Instagram. People aged 35 and 55 will also be found on the platform. Users over 55 are rather few, but this does not mean that targeting ads to this audience is never profitable. On the contrary. Instagram is growing increasingly each year and attracting more and more new users, including those older. Interestingly, in terms of gender, the gentle advantage has been men for some time, but it is so small that the advertising message is worth targeting both men and women. 

It is said that one picture is worth more than a thousand words. Based on this principle, Instagram is based on visual messages in the form of photos or short videos. This platform will work perfectly for brands for which the visual sphere is extremely important. Therefore, advertising on Instagram can be a good solution in artistic industries—for photographers or artists, clothing brands, cosmetics, automotive, or architects. 

Why should you advertise on Instagram?

There are many reasons why it’s really worth advertising on Instagram. Some of the biggest advantages that make it worth considering investing in such promotion of your business include:

• Widespread reach – a huge number of users spend time on Instagram every day. In addition, they are mostly there for relaxation or entertainment, so the ads blend in with the rest of the posts and are viewed in passing. 
• Substantially low cost—advertising on Instagram does not require investing large amounts of money. Exactly how much you spend is up to you, but on average, you can get a click from an Internet user for as little as a dozen pennies.
• Ad format is a big advantage of this platform. First of all, they appear in places that are almost impossible to miss. On Instagram, the effect of so-called banner blindness is practically non-existent because the ads appear wherever the viewer is looking for content, plus they look identical to other users’ posts or testimonials. The ads themselves can appear, for example, between posts on the main board or profile or between Instagram Stories.  
• Building Recognition—In addition to Instagram’s main advantages, we can also include its beneficial effect on building brand recognition among app users, where the ad itself plants the thought of buying a particular product/service. This can take place both locally and nationally.

Creating advertising on Instagram

If we want to advertise on Instagram, we need to remember one condition: we must have a business account and a professional profile on this portal. We can create the campaigns themselves in two ways. The first is to design them directly in the application, while the second requires us to use Facebook’s Ad Manager. 

Setting up an ad in the app is very simple and intuitive, but we must remember that we can only promote existing posts on our profile. To do so, click the „Promote post” button next to the post of our choice. We will then be taken to the panel for creating an ad. 

The first step is to indicate the goal of our campaign. It should reflect what we care most about in our campaign. Here, we have a choice: more profile visits, site visits or messages. It is also worth remembering that the goal of our campaign will also determine where our recipient will be taken after clicking on the ad. Once we select „More site visits,” we must additionally indicate what CTA button we want to use and add the URL of our site. 

The next step is to define the audience. However, before we get down to it, it’s worth bearing in mind that if we want to promote a post about loans, employment opportunities, real estate or social issues, elections or politics, the first step is to select the appropriate advertising category from the special requirements. We determine the audience after selecting the appropriate option (or skipping this step if it doesn’t apply to us). 

We have two options: automatic selection or creating our audience group. If we select the automated option, Instagram will target ads to audiences similar to those who follow us. However, if we prefer to specify our audience more precisely, the platform also gives us this option. We can configure information such as location, age, gender, and interests.

The final step in creating our campaign is to specify the budget and duration. And you’re done—that’s how you can create your first, very simple campaign.

The last step is to specify the budget and duration of the campaign.

If, however, you would like to go a step further and learn how to create even more effective ads on Instagram, then Facebook Ad Manager will come to your aid. It’s a slightly more time-consuming process, but it will allow us to take full advantage of the platform’s capabilities and reach a more specific audience. In this case, we will create our campaigns analogously to creating campaigns on Facebook. However, before starting the activities, connecting your Instagram account with your company profile on Facebook is necessary. 

The main and only difference between a Facebook and Instagram campaign is the selection of the target location where it will be displayed. In short, we need to uncheck all options related to Facebook and leave only those related to Instagram. 

When creating a campaign, we start, as a standard, by selecting its target. We have a much larger selection than creating an ad using an app. Next, we need to configure the ad set, and in it our audience group in addition to features such as location, age, gender or interests, here we also have the option to choose to target custom audiences or similar audiences. The next step is to plan the budget (we can add daily or total) and the ad schedule. The most important element we need to set in the ad set is the placements as mentioned above. We click manual placements and select only the Instagram option to do this. 

The final step in creating a campaign is, of course, setting up the ad itself. This involves adding an image or video to it, the headline and text of the ad, and other necessary elements like the URL or CTA button.

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Types of advertising on Instagram

Similar to Facebook ads, you have several different formats to choose from. Unfortunately, many of them are unavailable from the mobile app, and we can only add them using the Ad Manager.

• Graphic ads — the most popular format for this creative type is the square. Instagram also accepts ads in horizontal and vertical formats.
• Video ads — Instagram is increasingly betting on this very format. If you include video footage in your ads on Instagram, it can be in square or horizontal format (except for Instagram Stories, where you can include video ads vertically) 
• Carousel ads — they consist of 2-10 graphics or videos. Advertising on Instagram will be displayed in square or vertical format in News and coverage.
• Instagram Stories — advertisements in relationships support images and videos with dimensions matching News, which means we can add a single image or video with a maximum length of 120 seconds, which has an aspect ratio of 9:16 and from 4:5 to 1.91:1. However, it is recommended to add ads in a vertical format of 9:16.
• Reels — we can only use full-screen assets with a 9:16 vertical aspect ratio for Reels ads.
• Store on Instagram displays as a combination of one main graphic or video and three additional photos. All ads are displayed in a 1:1 square format

Summary

Advertisements on Instagram are a great solution for companies that care about strengthening their position in social media channels. They help quickly gain new customers and observers. Due to less competition on this platform, they can also be an extremely profitable investment for many industries.

If you’re not sure how to create an ad on Instagram or don’t have the time to run one, you can enlist the help of marketing agency. They will prepare well-tailored advertising materials for you and take care of your hardest task: selecting the right target audience to bring in the most conversions.