How instagram advertising works

A 5-Step Guide to Using Instagram Ads

If you have a budget allocated for paid social, you should strongly consider running Instagram ads. Why?

27% of users say they find new products and brands through paid social ads, and Instagram ads can reach over 1.2 billion people, or 20% of the world’s population over age 13.

In this article, we’ll give you a comprehensive overview about how to advertise on Instagram, including an easy 5-step guide to create your first ad in just a few taps.

What are Instagram ads?

How much do Instagram ads cost?

Types of Instagram ads

How to choose the best Instagram ad type

How to advertise on Instagram

Best practices for Instagram ads

Bonus: Download a free pack of 8 eye-catching Instagram ad templates created by Hootsuite’s professional graphic designers. Start stopping thumbs and selling more today.

What are Instagram ads?

Instagram ads are posts for which businesses can pay to serve to Instagram users.

Source: Instagram (@oakodenmark, @elementor)

Similar to Facebook, Instagram ads appear throughout the app, including in users’ feeds, Stories, Explore, and more. They look similar to normal posts but always contain a “sponsored” label to indicate that they are an ad. They also often have more features than a normal post, such as links, CTA buttons, and product catalogs.

How much do Instagram ads cost?

The cost of Instagram ads is highly dependent on a variety of factors – there is no average or benchmark price. Some cost factors include:

Your targeting
Competitiveness of your industry
Time of year (costs often go up during holiday shopping periods in Q4 such as Black Friday)
Placement (costs can differ between ads shown on Facebook vs Instagram)

The best way to evaluate your budget is to set up a draft campaign in Ads Manager and look for the Audience Definition and Estimated Daily Results modules, which will tell you if your budget settings will be sufficient to reach your desired audience within your desired duration.

Note that there is no “best practice” for how much to spend. You can get started by spending just a few dollars a day, and scale up from there based on success.

In order to control the costs of your Instagram ads, you can set either daily budgets or lifetime spending limits. We’ll explain this in more detail in our 5-step guide below.

Types of Instagram ads

There are many different types of advertising formats on Instagram, including:

Image ads
Stories ads
Video ads
Carousel ads
Collection ads
Explore ads
IGTV ads
Shopping ads
Reels ads

The wide range means that you can choose the best ad type that matches your specific business goal. Each ad format has its own selection of call-to-action options, which are listed below.

Image ads

Image ads allow businesses to use single images to advertise their brand, products and services.

Source: Instagram (@veloretti)

Image ads are best suited for campaigns with compelling visual content that can be conveyed in a single image. These images can be created from high-quality photography or design and illustration.

It’s also possible to add text to images. However, Instagram recommends limiting overlaid text as much as possible for best results.

Instagram Stories Ads are full-screen image or video ads that appear between users’ Stories.

Instagram Stories are a well-used part of the app, with over 500 million Instagram users viewing Stories every day. Engagement is often higher with Stories ads, as the format covers the whole mobile screen and feels much more immersive than in-feed ads.

The best Instagram Stories ads are ones that look and feel like normal Stories and don’t stand out as ads. When designing Stories ads, businesses can use all organic Instagram Stories features like filters, text, GIFs, and interactive stickers.

Source: Instagram (@organicbasics)

Stories ads can use still photos, videos, and carousels. The call-to-action is presented as a swipe-up link at the bottom of the Story.

Video ads

Similar to image ads, video ads on Instagram allow businesses to give users a closer look at their brand, products, and services.

In-feed video ads can be up to 60 minutes long, but shorter videos are usually more effective. Read more best practices for designing Instagram video ads.

Source: Instagram (@popsocketsnl)

Carousel ads

Carousel ads feature a series of images or videos that users can swipe through. They can appear both in-feed and within Instagram Stories, with a call-to-action button or swipe up link that lead users directly to your website.

You can use carousel ads to:

Showcase a collection of related products
Tell a multi-part story
Share up to 10 images or videos

Source: Instagram (@sneakerdistrict)

Collection ads

Collection ads are a combination between carousel ads and shopping ads. Collection ads showcase products directly from your product catalog.

Collection ads are best suited for ecommerce brands, as they allow users to purchase products directly from the ad. When a user clicks on the ad, they’re directed to an Instagram Instant Experience Storefront where they can learn more about the product and proceed to purchase.

Source: Instagram (@flattered)

Explore ads

Explore ads appear within the Explore tab, an area of the platform where users discover new content and accounts that are tailored based on their Instagram usage habits. More than 50% of Instagram users access Explore every month, so it’s a great place to gain exposure.

Instagram Explore ads do not appear in the Explore grid or the topic channels, but rather are shown after someone clicks on a photo or video from Explore. As the content in users’ Explore tabs is constantly changing, Explore ads allow businesses to be shown alongside culturally relevant and trending content.

Explore ads can be both images and videos.

Pro Tip: No need to design brand new assets for Explore ads. You can simply re-use existing assets.

IGTV ads

IGTV ads are video ads that play after a user clicks to watch an IGTV video from their feed. Videos can be up to 15 seconds long, and should be designed for vertical full screen viewing (more IGTV ad specs).

They are shown midroll (in the middle of the video), potentially with the option to skip.

IGTV ads are currently available to users with Instagram Creator accounts in the US, UK, and Australia, with more countries rolling out soon. Creators can opt in to having ads shown in their IGTV videos, and receive 55% of the advertising revenue generated from each view.

Shopping ads

With 130 million users tapping on shopping posts every month, it’s no wonder Instagram has been heavily improving its ecommerce features over the last 1-2 years. With Instagram’s newest Shopping features, users can now view and purchase products without ever leaving the app (limited to businesses with Instagram Checkout enabled).

Instagram Shopping ads take users directly to a product description page within the Instagram app. They can then purchase through your mobile website.

In order to run Shopping ads, you need to set up your Instagram Shopping catalog.

Pro Tip: Take advantage of Hootsuite’s integration with Shopify to access your catalog right from your Hootsuite dashboard.

Source: Instagram

Reels ads

With the successful launch of Reels, Instagram recently announced the ability to advertise within Reels.

Ads are shown in between Reels, with similar specs to Stories ads (full screen vertical videos), and can be up to 30 seconds. They should include sound or music to be well-integrated with organic Reels.

How to choose the best Instagram ad type

With so many different ad types available, it can be overwhelming to select one to use for your campaign. The good news: Ads Manager is well set up for experimentation, which means you can test multiple formats and see which one performs best before running a full campaign.

To narrow down the formats, use these questions to guide you.

1. What is my goal?

With your social media marketing strategy in mind, identify the most important outcome for your Instagram ads campaign. Do you want to:

Drive traffic to your website?
Get video views for a new product?
Increase brand awareness for a new business?
Drive ecommerce purchases, app installs, or email signups?

After clarifying your goal, you can choose some potential formats based on the supported objectives and call-to-action options for each ad type. For example, Stories, IGTV and Reels ads are better for driving video views, while Shopping and Collection ads will be best for driving ecommerce purchases.

Bonus: Download a free pack of 8 eye-catching Instagram ad templates created by Hootsuite’s professional graphic designers. Start stopping thumbs and selling more today.

Download now

2.

Who is my target audience?

Depending on who you wish to target with your Instagram ads, some ad types may be better than others.

Think about your audience’s habits and behaviors. Do they like watching lots of videos? Are they avid online shoppers? Do they spend more time watching Stories and Reels instead of scrolling through their feed?

Choose ad types with objectives and call-to-actions that match your audience’s natural preferences.

3. What has performed best on organic?

Chances are that your organic followers have lots of similarities to the audience you’ll be targeting with your Instagram ads. So, look to your organic feed to see what types of content have performed well, and that can give you a good indication of what paid formats might resonate with your audience.

How to advertise on Instagram

There are two routes for creating Instagram ads campaigns: promoting a post and Ads Manager. Promoting an existing post only takes a few taps and can be done right from the Instagram app, but lacks the customization options available in Ads Manager.

Below, we’ll walk you through both methods.

Source: Instagram

Instagram advertising method 1: Promoting a post in-app

The easiest way to start advertising on Instagram is to promote one of your existing Instagram posts. This is similar to Facebook’s Boost Post option.

If you have a post that’s performing well in terms of engagement, promoting it within the app is a quick and easy method to scale up the post’s success—and show it to new people who aren’t following you yet.

You’ll need to have a business or creator account on Instagram to do this. You’ll also need to have a Facebook Business Page connected to your Instagram account (here’s how to connect your Facebook and Instagram accounts in Facebook Business Manager).

Then, it’s as simple as clicking Promote on the post you wish to turn into an ad.

You’ll be prompted to choose your preferred audience, destination, budget, and duration for your ad to run.

Finally, tap Create Promotion.

That’s it! Your ad will be reviewed and approved by Facebook. Once it goes live, be sure to monitor the results of your ad in the Promotions tab of your Instagram profile.

Instagram advertising method 2: Creating Instagram ads using Facebook Ads Manager (5-step guide)

In order to get the most out of Instagram’s extensive ad targeting, creative, and reporting abilities, you can use Facebook Ads Manager to create ad campaigns (remember that Facebook owns Instagram).

Although it requires a bit more work, our 5-step guide will guide you through the process.

Step 1: Choose your objective

To start, go to Ads Manager and click +Create.

First, you’ll need to choose your campaign objective from the list below.

Here’s a quick breakdown of what each of these objectives aims to achieve.

Brand awareness: Increase awareness of your business or products among users who haven’t heard of you yet.
Reach: Show your ad to as many people as possible in your target audience.
Traffic: Drive clicks to your website, app, or any other URL.
App installs: Get users to download your app.
Engagement: Increase comments, likes, shares, event responses, and offer claims on your ad.
Video views: Get video views from users most likely to watch it.
Lead generation: Gather personal info from interested users (i.e. email signups).
Messages: Get users to send a message to your brand account.
Conversions: Drive sales or sign-up conversions on your website or app.
Catalog sales: Promote sales from your online store catalog.
Store traffic: Direct users to your brick-and-mortar location.

This video can help identify your objective:

[Instagram Ad Options video]

After selecting your objective, you’ll be prompted to name your campaign. Tip: Give it a specific name based on the campaign objective to help you keep track of your campaigns.

Finally, you’ll have the option to turn on Campaign Budget Optimization. This option allows Facebook’s algorithm to determine how to spend your budget across ad sets. AdEpresso has a full guide about if you should use Campaign Budget Optimization.

Step 2: Choose your budget and schedule

In this step, you’ll choose how much you want to spend and how long your campaign will run.

For your budget, you’ll have two options:

Daily budget: Set a maximum daily spend, useful for always-on ads
Lifetime budget: Set a maximum spend for your whole campaign, useful for ads with a clear end date

Under Ad Scheduling you can choose to run ads continuously (most common), or only at certain times of day (for example, if you’re a food delivery company and only want to run ads in the evening when your audience is most likely to place delivery orders).

As you adjust these options, you’ll see the Audience Definition and Estimated Daily Results modules in the right-hand column which will give you an idea of expected reach for your chosen budget. Try to choose settings so that your ad set falls in the middle of the green range.

Step 3: Identify your audience

The next step is to define your audience targeting. In this step you can either Create a New Audience or use a Saved Audience.

Saved Audiences are useful if you have your own custom audience data (i.e. past website visitors) or past audiences from previous campaigns that performed well. If not, you can create a new audience based on demographics, interests, and behavioral targeting.

During this step, you can also select Dynamic Creative. If you choose this option, you can upload separate visual assets and headlines, and Facebook will automatically create combinations that are optimized for your target audience.

Step 4: Select your ad placements

In the Placements section, you can decide where your ads will appear.

There are two options:

Automatic Placements: Ads will be shown to your audience wherever they’re likely to perform best.
Manual Placements: You can choose specifically where your ad will appear (and not appear). If you want to limit your ads to show only on Instagram (not Facebook), you can choose this using Manual Placements.

Here’s where you can select your manual placements:

While previewing placements, Ads Manager will display the technical requirements for each one. To ensure your visual assets are optimized for each format, see our guide to social media image sizes.

Step 5: Create your ads

Now it’s time to create the actual ad. Start by choosing your Facebook Page and corresponding Instagram Account. Then you can select your preferred ad format.

Then, proceed to fill out the rest of the details under Ad Creative:

Choose your pictures or videos (unless you’re using an existing post)
Input your ad copy
Select a payment option
Review your ad
Click Confirm

At this step you will also choose the call-to-action button and enter the URL where you want to send people who click on your ad.

If you want to track conversions from your ad, it’s important to select the Facebook Pixel in the Tracking section. Once connected to your website or app, your Facebook pixel will allow you to see insights about how your audience interacts with your business after clicking on your ad.

When you’re ready, click Confirm to launch your Instagram ad.

Best practices for Instagram ads

Now you have everything you need to know about setting up and launching Instagram ads. The next step is designing effective visual assets for your ads.

Here are some tips for attention-grabbing Instagram ad design.

Design mobile-first ads

98.8% of users access social media via a mobile device, so it’s vital to design your creative for mobile viewing, not desktop.

Here are a few tips to design mobile-first ads:

When capturing video content, make sure to film in vertical (9×16) as this is easier to crop to 4×5 than from landscape
Minimize the amount of text in your ads
If you do add text, choose large font sizes that are easy to read on mobile screens
Add animations and motion graphics to videos to quickly engage viewers
Keep videos short (15 seconds or less)

Keep branding and messaging upfront

The first few seconds of your ad will determine whether a viewer will stop scrolling and watch the whole thing. That’s why it’s important to start your ad with the key message and showcase your branding within the first 3 seconds.

Use sound to delight

40% of users consume social media with sound off. As such, it’s important to design your ads for sound-off consumption, and to use sound to delight users who do have sound on. Here’s how to do that:

Use visual elements to tell your story and deliver your key message without sound
Add captions for any voiceover or scripted audio
Use text overlay to deliver your key message without sound

Pitch, play, plunge

Facebook recommends designing a combination of creative types that work together to grab attention and reward interest:

Pitch: Short assets that get the campaign idea across immediately and grab attention
Play: Assets that allow light exploration and interactivity for interested audiences
Plunge: Immersive assets that allow people to go in-depth into your campaign idea

Looking for more inspiration? Here are 53 examples of amazing Instagram ads.

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The Complete Guide to Advertising on Instagram

So you’re running paid search and display ads through Google, you’re advertising on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and even some niche industry-related social sites. Perhaps you’re even running some guerilla advertising campaigns, or commercials through NPR. But for some strange reason, you dismissed Instagram, unsure if it would yield ROI.

Well, I’m here to inform you that today is not the day to ignore Instagram! While Instagram may be younger, with fewer users, than its parent company Facebook, Instagram is the breakout star of the family who everyone wants to sit next to at the Thanksgiving table. Instagram provides a platform to tell visual stories through various ad formats, and many advertisers have seen this channel yielding higher ROI in comparison to their other advertising campaigns.

Today Instagram has 800 million active users, according to Statista, and the rate of rapid growth it has seen since 2013 is pretty astounding. Just check out the graph below.

But with so many active folks scrolling through their feeds at all hours of the day, how in the world can a little business like yours stand out?

This is where Instagram advertising comes into play. Similar to Facebook, with popularity comes clutter, and breaking through that clutter organically to make a real impact can feel nearly impossible. To focus on the right people, at the right time, with the right message and imagery, Instagram ads are your powerful vehicle to do just that…

In this guide you’ll learn everything you need to know to get started with an Instagram advertising campaign.

<<Short on time? Get our free All-Star Playbook to Online Advertising, to read later.>>

What Is Instagram Advertising?

Instagram advertising is method of paying to post sponsored content on the Instagram platform to reach a larger and more targeted audience. While there are many reasons a business or individual may decide to advertise, Instagram advertising is often utilized to grow brand exposure, website traffic, generate new leads, and move current leads down the funnel (and hopefully towards converting).

Since Instagram is such a visual platform, text ads are not a thing here. Rather you need an image, set of images, or video (which can be accompanied by text) to reach your audience with Instagram ads.

The exciting part? Instagram advertising works! In March 2017, over 120 million Instagrammers visited a website, got directions, called, emailed, or direct messaged to learn about a business based on an Instagram ad. According to Instagram, 60% of people say they discover new products on the platform, and 75% of Instagrammers take action after being inspired by a post.

Similar to Facebook ads, throwing some money behind a post will lead to more exposure for your brand, as well as more control over who can see your post.

For more fun facts about Instagram, check out this post.

Is Instagram Advertising Right for Your Business?

This leads to the obvious question: Who is on Instagram? Is it just teenagers taking selfies? Or 20-somethings looking for recipes? What about older populations? Are they “gramming” their grandchildren?

Unfortunately for all you marketers targeting the grandparent demographic, Instagram does tend to skew towards a more youthful audience, with the largest percentage of users falling in the age range of 18-29 (55%), then between 30-49 years-old (28%). Only 11% of Instagram users are between the ages of 50-64, and just 4% are adults over 65.

According to Hootsuite, the majority of Instagram users live in urban areas (32%), 28% of users live in the suburbs, and 18% of users in the country. While there are more women on Instagram than men, the gender gap is not as large as it once was.

If this doesn’t sound like the audience you’re targeting, you still should not dismiss the social network as a useless opportunity. Similar to what happened with Facebook, more and more adults over 34 will likely be hopping on the Instagram bandwagon as the platform continues to grow. Also, if you are working with the 4% of adults over 65, you can always target that demographic directly…

Via Jenn’s Trends

Similar to many other social advertising platforms, Instagram gives you the granular control to target specific genders, age ranges, locations, interests, behaviors, and more. You can even target a custom or lookalike audience so you’re showing ads only to your direct list of leads or those who have a similar makeup.

What advertisers should really latch onto is the fact that Instagram uses Facebook’s demographic data to serve up ads to the appropriate parties. This makes the tool super valuable for advertisers looking to target a niche audience, because Facebook already has a thorough history and thorough demographic targeting options.

Instagram advertising can be especially powerful if you’re in a visual or creative industry, such as the restaurant business or craft marketing.

How Much Do Instagram Ads Cost?

This is a tricky question to answer, as costs are based on a variety of factors, and as you may have suspected these factors are not all revealed to us by the platform. The model is based on CPC (cost-per-click) and CPM’s (cost per impressions), and prices are determined according to Instagram’s ad auction.

“The cost of Instagram ads are influenced by many factors — everything from your audience to your ad feedback,” says Andrew Tate from AdEspresso. “There’s a lot that goes into understanding how to advertise on Instagram.”

AdEspresso recently dug into $100 million worth of Instagram ad spend in 2017, and found that the average cost per click (CPC) for Instagram ads in Q3 ranged between $0.70 and $0.80. While this is a helpful benchmark it will of course vary depending upon the auction, audience, competition, time of day, day of week, etc.

Some advertisers find that Instagram ads often have higher engagement, but this can cost them. According to Keith Baumwald, founder of Leverag Consulting, Instagram ads costs are slightly higher in cost than Facebook ads. Baumwald claims that since the ads are so highly targeted you could end up paying as high as $5 a CPM.

On the bright side, advertisers do have control over how their budgets are allocated. For instance, you can choose between a daily budget to limit the amount spend per day or a lifetime budget where you would set up your ads to run for a length of time until the budget is depleted.

Other ways to control your Instagram ad spend include setting your ad schedule (for instance, you can specify certain hours of the day you want your ads to run), setting your ad delivery method (there are three options: link clicks, impressions, and daily unique reach), as well as setting your bid amount (manual vs. automatic).

6 Easy Steps to Start Advertising on Instagram

Learning the ins and outs of a new advertising platform might seem overwhelming at first. The good news here is that if you’re advertising on Facebook, there isn’t much to learn. In fact, Instagram ads can be configured right through Facebook Ad Manager.

If you’re not advertising on Facebook, don’t fret. We’ll walk you through the process below, and there is also the option to create some simple ads directly within the Instagram app.

Advertisers who are more advanced or running a relatively large ad set can also chose to configure their ads through Power Editor or Facebook’s Marketing API. Instagram Partners is also available for businesses who need to buy and manage multiple ads, manage a large community, and deliver content at scale.

For this post, we’ll focus on creating ads through Facebook Ad Manager, which is the most common method due to its ease-of-use and the ability to customize these ads to a higher degree than what is possible within the app itself. While configuring Instagram ads is not overly complex, there are quite a few steps to be aware of. Starting with…

1. Navigate to Facebook’s Ad Manager

To navigate to ad manager within Facebook, simply follow this link, assuming you’re logged in to the appropriate Facebook account.

Note: There is no specific Ad Manager for Instagram; Instagram ads are managed through the Facebook Ads UI.

2. Set Your Marketing Objective

Now for the fun part, choosing your campaign goal. Luckily, the goals are named in a self-explanatory manner. Need more traffic? Select the traffic goal. Looking to increase brand awareness? Choose the brand awareness goal. You get the gist.

One thing to be aware of is that Instagram ads only work with the following goals:

Brand awareness
Reach
Traffic (for clicks to your website or to the app store for your app)
App installs
Engagement (for post engagement only)
Video views
Conversions (for conversions on your website or app)

While these goals are intuitive, some come along with a few additional configuration steps, which I’ll run through for you.

Brand awareness: Take an extra-long lunch. No extra steps here! This is the most standard goal that will try to show your ads to more potential people likely to be interested. How does Instagram determine this? It’s a secret, but this goal will likely expose some new and relevant folks to your brand.

Reach: If reach is what you’re looking for (as in maximizing how many people see your ads) then you’ll just need to be sure to select your Instagram account when creating the ad itself. It’s also worth noting that if you’re looking to run an Instagram Story ad “reach” is currently the only objective you can chose. The cool thing about this goal is that you can take advantage of Facebook’s split testing feature, which allows you to split test two ads to see which one yields more installs. NOTE: Split testing is also available for Traffic, App Installs, Video Views, Lead Generation, and Conversion goals.

Traffic: If you’re looking to send more people to your website or app store to download your app, this is the appropriate goal for you. The only additional steps you’ll need to take is choosing between those two options, then enter the URL of choice, and let the traffic jam in!

Engagement: Who doesn’t want more likes, shares, and overall engagement? If your goal is engagement, one thing to note is that you currently can only pay to play for “post engagement” on Instagram. Facebook will allow you to pay for “page engagement” and “event responses,” but this is not currently available to Instagram.

App Installs: If your main goal is app installs, you’ve come to the right place. To configure this you’ll need to choose your app from the app store during set-up.

Video Views: Videos are often an investment of time and money, so not promoting your video on Instagram would be like buying a plane ticket to Hawaii, and leaving it in your desk. Luckily, this goal is very straightforward, and doesn’t require additional setup steps.

Lead Generation: Who doesn’t want more leads? If that is your main goal this objective is for you. Just note that lead generation ads do not provide all of the same pre-filled fields as Facebook. Instagram currently only supports email, full name, phone number, and gender. These ads also have more of a barrier than Facebook lead generation ads, since when leads click to open the ad they’ll need to click through to fill out their information. On Facebook, leads can fill out their information without all the additional clicking. The other set-up piece is that you’ll need to create a lead form when creating your ad. If you’re interested in learning more about lead ads check out this post.

Conversions: Last, but certainly not least, we have conversions. This goal allows you to drive your leads to take action and convert on your website or within your app. The additional set-up here requires you to configure either a Facebook pixel or app event based on the website or app you’re looking to promote; this will allow you to track conversions.

3. Configure Your Target Audience

Now that you’ve selected your objective, you need to target the appropriate audience to get your ads in front of the right people. This is the true beauty of Instagram ads since you’ll be using Facebook’s depth of demographic knowledge to reach the right people.

If you’ve done this for Facebook ads before you likely already have several audiences built, and are quite familiar with the process. If you’re new to this process here’s a run-down of your targeting options, which you can layer to get a precisely targeted audience. (For instance if you want to target women, in New York, between the ages of 19 and 65, who are interested in yoga and health food, you can do just that!)

Location: Whether you want to target a country, region, state, city, zip code, exclude or include certain places, location targeting will allow you to do all of this and more.

Age: Allows you to target ranges from age 13 to 65+

Gender: Choose between all, men, or women

Languages: Facebook recommends leaving this blank unless the language you’re targeting is not common to the location your targeting.

Demographics: Under “Detailed Targeting” you’ll find demographics, which has several sub-categories with even more sub-categories under those. For instance, you can target “Demographics” > “Home” > “Home Ownership” > “Renters.”

Interests: Interests is also under “Detailed Targeting” with multiple sub-categories to dig into. For instance, if you’re looking for people interested in distilled beverages, science fiction movies, and aviation, those options are available for you!

Behaviors: And yet another “Detailed Targeting” option with multiple sub-categories to explore. Whether it be purchasing behaviors, job roles, anniversaries, or other behaviors the options seem endless.

Connections: Here you’ll be able to target people connected to your page, app, or event.

Custom Audience: Custom audiences let you upload your own list of contacts allowing you to target leads already in your pipeline or customers who you’re looking to upsell.

Lookalike Audience: If your custom audience is tapped to their potential, create a lookalike audience. This will allow Instagram to find people who have similar traits to your other audiences.

Once you’ve configured your audience, Facebook will also provide you with a guide to how specific or broad your audience is (like the one below).

This is an important tool to pay attention to, because you want to strike a balance of your audience not being too huge (since it’s likely not targeted enough), but also not being too specific (in the red zone), since there may not be many people (if any) to reach with so many layered targets.

4. Choose Your Placements

Now that you’re targeting your ideal demographic, it’s time to choose your placements! This is critical if your goal for a campaign is to only show ads on Instagram. If you choose to ignore this step, Facebook will allow your ads to appear on both platforms.

This isn’t necessarily a negative thing, but if you have content that you’ve created specifically for Instagram, you should select “Edit Placements” here.

From here you can specify Instagram as a placement, as well as if you’d like these ads to appear in the feed and/or the stories section of the platform.

5. Set Your Budget and Ad Schedule

If you are familiar with how budgets work through Facebook, AdWords, and other digital advertising platforms, this step should not be overly challenging for you. If not, then take a deep breath; while you might not know exactly where to set your daily or lifetime budget when running your first Instagram ad campaign, this comes with trial and error, as well as experience. And the good thing is you have the control to pause or stop your campaign at any time if you feel your budget is not being properly allocated.

So should you go daily or lifetime? While I typically lean towards daily budgets since it guarantees your budget won’t be spent too quickly, lifetime budgets allow you to schedule your ad delivery, so there are pluses and minuses to both options. I would also advise exploring the advanced options pictured below. For instance, if you bid manually you’ll have the control to decide how much each lead is worth to you.

As mentioned above, you can also run an ad schedule to target specific times of day and days of the week when you know your audience is most active on the platform. This is a super valuable way to optimize your budget. As a reminder, this is only available for those using a lifetime budget.

6. Create Your Instagram Ad

Now it is time to create your Instagram ad!

Hopefully after taking the steps above you already have some content in mind for the ad you are looking to promote. This part of the set-up may look different depending upon your campaign objective, but you’ll always have a few ad format options to choose from. So as a next step, let’s discuss the various ad formats available.

Instagram Ad Formats

If you are a bad decision-maker, you may want to brace yourself. Instagram has six ad formats to choose from. (This is way fewer than Facebook!) Two of those are for Instagram stories, which appear at the top of the feed in a manner similar to Snapchats. The other four are formats designed for the Instagram feed, which are more commonly used by advertisers.

#1. Image Feed Ads

This is your most standard ad format, and likely the one you see most often scrolling through your own feed. These ads are single images that will appear as a native experience as your target lead is scrolling through their feed. The lovely thing about these ads is that they don’t feel like ads, especially when done well.

Here are some additional details to be aware of:

Technical Requirements

File type: jpg or png
Maximum file size: 30MB
Minimum Image Width: 600 pixels
Image Ratio: 4:5 minimum, 16:9 maximum
Text length: 2,200 maximum (*although Instagram recommends staying below 90 for optimal delivery)
Hashtag Number: 30 maximum (*you can add additional in the comments)

Supported Objectives

Reach
Traffic
Conversions
App Installs
Lead Generation
Brand Awareness
Post Engagement
Product Catalog Sales
Store Visits

Supported Call-to-Action Buttons

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#2.

Image Story Ads

Same concept as above, but these are for Instagram stories! Instagram Story ads details below:

Technical Requirements

Image Ratio: 9:16 recommended
Minimum Image Width: 600 pixels

Supported Objectives

Reach
Traffic
Conversions
App Installs
Lead Generation

Supported Call-to-Action Buttons

Apply Now
Book Now
Contact Us
Download

3. Video Feed Ads

Bring your ad to life with a video! If you’ve put the time in to make a quality video, then you should absolutely be promoting it through your Instagram feed.

While most video files are supported by Instagram, they recommend using H.264 compression, square pixels, fixed frame rate, progressive scan, and stereo AAC audio compression at 128kbps+ (PRO TIP: if your video is not meeting these requirement you can always run it through the video transcoder, Handbrake, to make these adjustments).

Technical Requirements

Video Resolution: 1080 x 1080 pixels (at least)
Maximum file size: 4GB
Video Ratio: 4:5 minimum,16:9 maximum
Video Duration: 60 seconds maximum
Video Captions: optional
Image Ratio: 4:5 minimum, 16:9 maximum
Text length: 125 characters maximum recommended
Hashtag Number: 30 maximum (*you can add additional in the comments)

Supported Objectives

Reach
Traffic
Conversions
Lead Generation
Brand Awareness
Post Engagement
Store Visits

Supported Call-to-Action Buttons

Apply Now
Book Now
Call Now
Contact Us
Download

#4. Video Story Ads

This is another great place to run video ads, because stories are where users often expect to see videos, so the “selling” part of advertising doesn’t feel as forced. The recommended video specs for uploading are the same as listed above, and here are some additional details to keep in mind!

Technical Requirements

Video Resolution: 1080 x 1920 pixels (at least)
Maximum file size: 4GB
Video Ratio: 9:16 maximum
Video Duration: 15 seconds maximum
Video Captions: not available

Supported Objectives

Reach
Traffic
Conversions
Lead Generation
App Installs

Supported Call-to-Action Buttons

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Call Now
Contact Us
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#5. Carousel Feed Ads

Next we have carousel feed ads. How fun are these! This format allows you to show a series of scrollable images rather than just one single image.

This ad type is great for very visual brands, like those in the food industry, furniture sellers, clothing options, vacation destinations, car dealerships, etc. But they’re not only for “sexy” businesses; they can also work to humanize your brand or show off your culture by showing the people behind your software or financial company.

The carousel format allows you to choose from up to 10 images within a single ad, each with its own link. Video is also an option for these ads.

Technical Requirements

File type: jpg or png
Maximum file size: 30MB
Minimum Image Width: 600 pixels
Image Ratio: 4:5 minimum, 16:9 maximum
Text length: 2,200 maximum (*although Instagram recommends staying below 90 for optimal delivery)
Video Duration: 60 seconds maximum
Hashtag Number: 30 maximum (*you can add additional in the comments)

Supported Objectives

Reach
Traffic
Conversions
Brand Awareness
Lead Generation
Product Catalog Sales

Supported Call-to-Action Buttons

Apply Now
Book Now
Contact Us
Call Now
Download

#6.

Canvas Story Ads

And last, but definitely not least, we have the newest addition to the ad format family, Canvas ads. There ads are truly immersive, allowing advertising to create a 360 VR experience within their story. They’re only supported via mobile devices, and extremely customizable for the advertiser, but you will need some technical chops. These ads work with image, video, and carousel. Check out this guide to learn more about Canvas ads.

Technical Requirements

Minimum Image Width: 400 pixels
Minimum Image Height: 150 pixels

Supported Objectives

Reach
Brand Awareness
Traffic
Conversions
Lead Generation
Post Engagement
Video Views
Store Visits

Supported Call-to-Action Buttons

Apply Now
Book Now
Contact Us

5 Instagram Advertising Best Practices

Now that you’ve got the basic principles of Instagram advertising down, it is time to get the highest ROI possible by following these Instagram best practices to create great Instagram ads.

#1. Instill Each Ad with Personality

Whether it be a funny goof, an emotional video, or just an intriguing image showing off your culture, if your Instagram post doesn’t feel humanized then you will not reach your engagement potential.

People use Instagram to be entertained, amused, or amazed. Whether it’s while you’re on the train to work or when you are unwinding after a long day of work, no one is looking to hop on Instagram to see a boring corporate advertisement. This is why appealing to emotions is always the way to go. Check out this fun post from Shape Magazine as a perfect example.

#2. Make Sure Your Ad Is Contextually Relevant

What works with one social media platform won’t necessarily work with another. For instance, your business likely wouldn’t promote the same content through LinkedIn as they would through Twitter, as the audience is typically in a different state of mind.

The same goes for Instagram. Put yourself in your target buyer’s shoes and be aware of where they are. On Instagram, do you think your lead is likely to download and read your 40 page e-book? Probably not. Ensure your ads do not feel overly sales-driven because this isn’t typically what Instagram is used for.

#3. Use Hashtags…

But don’t just hashtag #food or #love. Get more creative, and do some user research to see which hashtags are more likely to be searched for by your audience. Also, don’t overdo it with hashtags. This can make your post look a bit sloppy and desperate.

The ideal number? TrackMaven analyzed 65,000 posts and found that 9 hashtags is the ideal number for highest post engagement. They also found that longer hashtags often perform better.

#4. Run a Contest

Promoting a contest or giveaway is by far one of the most effective ways to reach your goals faster with Instagram advertising. Why? Because people love competition and free stuff! What better way to get your audience excited about your brand?

If you need some help with how to go about this, check out this awesome post on how to run an Instagram giveaway from WordStream’s very own Dan Shewan.

#5. Post at Optimal Hours

I spoke a bit about this during the budgeting step of Instagram ad-set up, but using the ad-schedule feature (which is only available with lifetime budgeting) is a great way to get people at the right time.

Via CoSchedule

If you know your audience well, this shouldn’t be too hard to determine, but trial and error can also work here. Think about your vertical. If you’re an online retailer, when do people typically shop for clothing online? Or if you’re a car dealership, what days of the week do you see the highest spike in website traffic? Asking these questions is a good place to start.

Without further ado, set forth and advertise on Instagram! This is one platform you should not ignore, and this guide should provide you with enough resources to become insta-famous.

Looking for more help? Check out:

24 Instagram Marketing Tools for More Followers, Likes & Sales
The 15 Best Instagram Marketing Campaigns of the Year
10 Killer Instagram Marketing Tips for Brands
The Complete Guide to Instagram Analytics
7 Ways to Boost Holiday Instagram Sales

A step-by-step guide to launching ads on Instagram for beginners

Meta Platforms Inc. , which owns the social networks Facebook and Instagram, was recognized as an extremist organization by a court decision dated March 21, 2022, and its activities in Russia are prohibited.

Instagram is one of the most popular social networks. As of April 2020, Mediascope estimates its monthly audience in Russia at 61 million people, 28 million of which check the feed daily. This is the fourth most popular social network, users spend an average of 30 minutes a day on it. nine0003

72% of users have an average or higher income level, 10.5% work in managerial positions. Instagram ads are the right tool to tell these people about your products and services.

WEB-Index Mediascope about the audience of Instagram

Instagram belongs to Facebook, so you can run ads here in two ways: through the Facebook advertising account and through the Instagram application itself. If you run ads through the Facebook advertising account, then you will have access to all the features of this tool: retargeting pixel, dynamic creatives, detailed statistics. When launched through the application, there are fewer opportunities, but the interface is simpler and it will be faster to launch ads. In this guide, we'll take a look at both tools. nine0011

Content:

Preparation
How advertising works on Instagram
Recording Account
We Connect the Business Profile
We execute the Account

We run the advertising through the Instagram
Weem, we post the history
Moving the history of
Facebook
Creating a campaign and choosing a goal
Setting up an ad group
Making an ad

Subtleties of advertising on Instagram

We will summarize

Running ads through the Instagram app

If you have connected a business profile, you can run ads directly from the app on your smartphone. It’s convenient — it’s just a few clicks before the ad starts. On the other hand, there are fewer options available than when working with the Facebook account.

You can only promote posts and stories through the app that you already have in your account. So first post all the content you plan to promote. Please note that you can't promote IGTV posts right now. nine0003

Promoting the publication

Destination

Open the publication that we will use in advertising and click "Promote". If you are running ads for the first time, the application will tell you more about where you can send traffic: to your profile, to a website, or directly to direct. The first option is suitable if you want to attract new subscribers. The second is if you are promoting the site. The third is if you want to immediately engage the audience in communication, for example, so that they request a catalog. nine0003

Ivan's is an online course for students and recent graduates. On his Instagram account, he publishes useful materials on the subject of the course: potential students sign up, get acquainted with free materials, gain confidence and then pay for the course. The account has both native posts with tips and life hacks and commercial posts promoting products.

Ivan connected a business profile and filled in the feed:

On the one hand, advertising on Instagram for Ivan is an account development tool. So when promoting native publications, he specifies the profile as the destination: users see useful content and subscribe to the account. On the other hand, it is a source of traffic to the site. So in commercial publications, he sends customers to a landing page: users see an interesting offer and go to the site. nine0003

If you select a website as a destination, the application will pull up the address specified in the profile settings. Here you can also edit the call to action if you are sending traffic to the site. By default, it is "Details", you can choose another one, to do this, click on the small "Edit" link in the "Your site" item.

Select the appropriate text on the button and click Finish. Then - "Next" in the upper right corner on the screen for choosing a destination.

Room

Let's move on to setting up the audience that will see your ad. You can trust the algorithms and select the "Automatic" option, then the social network will look for users who are similar to the account's current subscribers. This is a convenient option if you have an organic and active base that is interested in your products and services - in this case, Instagram understands which users to look for.

If you don't have many followers yet, or if they follow you because of contests and not for your content, it's better to set up the audience yourself. To do this, select "Create your audience". Here you can specify the geography, interests, and demographics of your audience. nine0003

Specify the geography of potential customers in the "Locations" section. In the "Regional" tab, you can specify all the cities or countries that you plan to cover. In the "Local" tab, you can specify a specific address and the radius around it, from 1 to 30 kilometers. Convenient if you are looking for clients for a local business, such as a coffee shop or a beauty salon. Or if you have a limited delivery radius.

In the "Interests" section, in free form, enter the interests for which you want to reach users. For example, "travelling", "cars", "raising children". Select the appropriate item, and the system will suggest similar interests. nine0011

Specify the age range and gender of the audience. For example, ads can be shown to women between 18 and 35 or men over 30.

Sometimes Ivan publishes entries that are aimed at readers from Moscow, and sometimes at those who live in the regions. When promoting different posts, it uses different geography settings. But interests usually do not change, its subscribers are actively interested in self-development, career, business.

"Places" is a mandatory section, "Interests" is an optional section. The application will tell you how many people match this set of descriptions. If the potential audience is small - usually less than 2500 users - the system will tell you that the potential reach is too narrow. Advertising in this case may be ineffective - few people will see it. To fix this, you can expand the geography and age range, or add additional interests. nine0003

Add a name and click "Finish" - the audience will be saved and you can use it for future campaigns.

Budget & Duration

Specify the daily budget for the campaign - from $80 to $20,000 - and the duration in days - from 1 to 30 days. low budget and short duration.

Ivan promotes each post from three to six days. He thinks so: less than three days is too short, the algorithm may not find the right audience. More than six days is a long time, the same people can come across the same post several times. And in the range from three to six, it is optimal: even if the algorithm shows campaigns to the same people, they will constantly see different content. nine0003

There are exceptions: if Ivan publishes a very important and viral post, or he announces a new product or event, then he runs the ad longer, up to 14 days. In this case, reach is important to him, and he does not worry about repeat impressions.

The campaign is ready to run. You can click "Promotion Preview" and see how users will see your ad in the feed, in stories, and in the "Interesting" section.

Add a PayPal card or account from which you will pay for advertising. Click "Payment", select a country and enter payment details. If you run ads from Russia, then keep in mind that the system will additionally charge VAT - 20% of advertising costs. That is, if the total campaign budget is 10,000 rubles, then in fact you will pay 12,000 rubles. nine0017
Click Create Promotion. The ad will go for moderation.

Promoting a story

Promoting a story works according to the same principle — select one of the published stories, indicate the platform to which we want to lead customers, describe the audience, set the budget and send it for moderation.

You can promote a story that you have posted within the last 24 hours, that is saved in your Instagram Highlights or is archived. Open the story, click on the three dots in the bottom right corner and click Promote. nine0003

There are several restrictions when promoting a story:

You cannot promote stories with clickable elements: hashtags, polls, user marks.
Stories that may violate the rights of others, such as gifs or masks from the Instagram collection, cannot be promoted.
You can't promote stories that were published too long ago, the statute of limitations is about two years.

Tracking performance

You can track the results of your ads in the "Promotions" section of your profile page. For each promotion, the application will show the number of impressions, audience parameters, budget expenditure. nine0011

We launch advertising through the Facebook account

To launch advertising through the Facebook account, you need to set up a campaign, an ad group and the ad itself. At the same time, only Instagram must be specified in the placement settings of the ad group, then ads will not be shown on other sites. Let's go in order.

The subtleties of advertising on Instagram

Advertising on Instagram must comply with the same rules as on other Facebook sites. Here are a few more recommendations that the social network gives for setting up ads. nine0003

Use a separate image format for Stories ads

Don't use the same media for feed and story ads. Prepare a separate version of the creative with a 9:16 aspect ratio and use it for ads in stories. And for the ribbon, leave the standard rectangular or square image. Please note that if you promote the gallery through the Facebook interface, then the images in the feed can only be square.

Do not overuse text on creatives

Facebook has a negative attitude towards images, more than 20% of which are text. This can lead to the fact that ads will scroll more slowly and fewer users will see them. It is better to put the text in the description, and leave the image clean.

Consider the interface

If the image has text at the very bottom or top of the screen, the interface elements will overlap it: the profile icon on the top, the call to action on the bottom. To prevent this from happening, place them at a distance of 14-15% of the height from the top and bottom edges. If you are using an image that is 1600 pixels tall, back off 220-250 pixels. nine0003

Don't forget that the user can turn off the sound

If you decide to promote the video, don't forget that the user can view it without sound. If you plan to convey important thoughts with your voice, then duplicate them with subtitles so as not to lose such users.

Check your account statistics

See which of your posts get the most engagement: likes, comments, bookmarks. It is probably worth using such recordings for advertising - they resonate most with your audience. nine0003

Promote new products, services, and offers

Instagram promotion is a way to promote an upcoming sale, new product launch, or special offer. Advertising will help convey information about the new product to an audience that may be interested in it.

Don't delay when using video in Stories

A story is only 15 seconds long - don't put off showcasing your product or brand. If you use a long introduction, then some users may simply go to the next publications and not even figure out what you offer them. nine0003

Show, don't tell

Show users the product in action: how other people use it, what are the non-standard uses for it, tell how you work on it. Tell a story, not just describe the benefits of a product.

Let's summarize

Advertising on Instagram can be launched in two ways: through the Facebook advertising account and directly in the Instagram application.

Prepare your account for launching ads: add an avatar, description, website link, contacts. Post several posts that will help users get to know your offer better. nine0011

Switch your account to a business profile. To do this, you need to link your Instagram profile to a Facebook page. It will take just a few clicks, but additional features will open up: you can view statistics, add information about the company, and run ads through the application.

Only posts and stories that have already been published can be promoted through the app. Choose where you want to send potential customers, describe the audience, set budget settings. nine0011

When launching ads through your Facebook account, you will have more options: flexible budget settings, pixel, catalog, dynamic creatives. But the launch will be more difficult.

Author: Slava Ufimtsev

Illustrations, design and layout: Julia Zass

Thank you!

how to set up and run advertising on Instagram

Social networks, in fact, have shaped the modern world. They created the principles of public reputation, gave people with small budgets the opportunity to promote their services and talents.

Instagram, which is already 12 years old, is currently the seventh most visited site in the world. In 2021, the network showed particularly strong growth and became the fourth most popular social platform. These facts are direct evidence of how valuable an Instagram presence is for your business. nine0003

Why is Instagram advertising an integral part of your marketing strategy? There are several reasons:

About 500 million daily active users visit the social network . This indicates the great popularity of Instagram and a huge audience.
Visual content has benefits . The whole point of Instagram is a beautiful story through a picture and interactive content. And, as you know, today people perceive this type of information best of all. nine0091
Hashtags help promote and find an audience . They have become an integral part of Instagram. Ideally unite a huge audience through common experiences and interests.
Wide promotional opportunities available . Instagram ads can be run, among others, through the Facebook Ads Manager platform. Running your ad campaigns on both platforms at the same time is a unique advantage.
Instagram easy to use . A business profile is created and maintained in the same way as a regular user profile.

Instagram users are a very active and highly engaged audience. Therefore, it is not so difficult to implement successful advertising on this platform. People here are already ready to shop. But knowing the basic nuances is still important, so let's look at them.

What is behind the definition of "advertising on Instagram"?

Instagram users see ads in their feeds and stories, i.e. where they watch content posted by the accounts they follow and associated with hashtags of interest to them. nine0003

Sponsored posts are similar to regular posts, but are always labeled "advertising" and often have more features: links, buttons, etc. . If you are creating a new business, Instagram is a great way to build your target audience. If your business has existed for some time, Instagram is an opportunity to tell more about your brand, product or service, to get closer to the client. At first, try not to focus on the number of sales. Work to let people know who you are and what you offer. nine0091

Large coverage . Thanks to its targeting capabilities, Instagram, with its billion user base, is one of the best social networks to reach your target audience. If you haven't quite figured out who your target audience is yet, take your time and use the data you get from each ad to make the next ad better based on the results.

Beautiful self-presentation . Instagram is a great opportunity to tell about yourself with an attractive picture.

A good Instagram story, photo or video is more convincing than a thousand words. Inspire your audience! nine0091

Sales . Even those who do not have a website can successfully sell on Instagram. On Instagram, advertising allows you to make direct sales. For small businesses, this is the most affordable and easiest way to promote your product. Especially if there is something that can be beautifully presented: confectionery, clothes, shoes, products of design bureaus, photo salons, etc.

The response rate for Instagram ads, if properly configured and run, is 50-60 times higher than on Facebook. Due to the simplicity of the interface and the emphasis on visual content, the platform is ten times more efficient. nine0003

Types of advertising on Instagram with examples

You can advertise goods and services on Instagram using:

organic advertising;
targeted advertising;
influencer ads;
advertisements purchased on the exchange.

Every business or brand starts promotion on Instagram by increasing their audience. Regularly creating interesting content is something without which you can’t get subscribers to your profile. Essentially, every page starts with organic ads and does it all the time. nine0003

Of course, you expect your Instagram results to improve all the time. In addition, you have additional goals. Expectations from your account are rising. Then you should use social media advertising tools more effectively.

See also

Instagram Promotion

Targeted advertising on Instagram

These are ads that are designed for a specific audience, their impressions are configured accordingly. For targeted advertising on Instagram, you select users by gender, age, location, interests, and other parameters. Your promotional post is shown to them. nine0003

Such advertising is paid. Content promotion can be launched from your own Instagram account or from a linked Facebook advertising account.

How to create publications for targeted advertising? You can promote your previously published posts or create new posts in Facebook Ads Manager.

If any of your existing ads are getting high engagement, you can easily turn them into a promoted post using the settings in your profile itself. Thus, it will be added to the feeds of people who are not yet following you, but are your potential customers. nine0003

Facebook Ads Manager has a lot more settings to better segment your audience. There is access to detailed statistics and analytics to improve results.

So, targeted advertising has many advantages: flexible settings, fast launch, detailed statistics.

Advertising with bloggers and opinion leaders

Users show more loyalty to people they trust, whom they perceive as their friends. But with just a beautiful picture is already more difficult. It has recently been causing "banner blindness" in the online audience. nine0003

The blogger doesn't just show ads. He recommends the product to his audience, and this greatly influences the results of the advertising message.

Advertising with bloggers can work for different purposes:

audience expansion;
increase brand awareness and loyalty;
informing about promotions;
bringing new customers.

The main formats of cooperation between an advertiser and a blogger: a post in the feed, Stories, ambassadorship. nine0003

Searching for influencers is a responsible job for an advertiser. It takes a lot of time to come to an agreement with the influencer, agree on the material with him, and get reporting. But at the same time, this type of Instagram ad is very popular as it usually works very well.

Our professionals will show you how to make money on Instagram

Website address

Advertising through instagram exchange

Exchanges are platforms where buyers find sellers of advertising space. Buyers are those who want to promote their product/service or their own Instagram profile. Vendors sell advertising space.

In essence, this is an intermediary platform between bloggers and advertisers.

For buyers of advertising, the exchange is useful to many:

You can track statistics on your account and on advertising creatives to determine the effectiveness of the purchased space on the exchange. nine0091
You can use the search tool. Among the thousands of PR sites, you can easily find the right one.
It is possible to obtain a guarantee for the execution of the order. But the effectiveness of an advertising campaign depends on your understanding of your target audience and on a well-chosen advertising space.

Here are some popular Instagram exchanges: Epicstars, Labelup, Plibber, Storiesgain, Adstamer, Socialjet, etc.

It should also be said about the commission that exchanges take from both advertisers and advertising customers. But the costs are fully paid off, regardless of whether you are a blogger or a customer. nine0003

See also

How to find the target audience on Instagram?

Requirements for advertising on Instagram

Before publication, the advertising material is moderated for compliance with the rules of the network. In terms of time, this is approximately one day.

What does the system check? Targeting settings, text, image, landing page.

See the official Facebook guide for all format requirements. On the social network site, you can also see what the maximum sizes of text, pictures, videos are. nine0003

When preparing advertising publications, it is important to correctly predict the reaction of the target audience. To do this, you should study her behavior and preferences. If it is difficult for you to do this on your own, you can use the Popsters.ru online service. With it, analyze data from both your own publics and competitors, determine the activity, the most profitable time ranges for publications, and evaluate content.

Ways to set up targeted ads on Instagram

Instagram targeting settings are available from a business account - go to it in your page settings.

There are two options for running targeted ads on Instagram:

from an Instagram profile;
from Facebook ADS Manager.

Yes, it's much easier to run ads for posts that have already been published in your account. Under each one there is a “Promote a post” function, you define it with several parameters and your ad on Instagram is ready. This option is fine if you're short on time, you're new, or you need reach for specific ads. nine0003

You get a lot more options when you create an ad in the Facebook Ads Manager. There you can set targeting settings in more detail, including promoting the site, landing page, i.e. any external resource.

When you have connected your Instagram account to your Facebook account, the next step is to select an advertising account. There are two options here: Business Manager or Ads Manager. Business Manager is more functional. There is an opportunity to work with multiple accounts, pixels, audiences, request and provide access to all of this to other companies. nine0003

Next, let's look at ways to set up ads on Instagram.

How to set up ads on Instagram through your profile

Running ads through your profile is a simple and quick process, although there are fewer opportunities in this case. This is an ideal way to advertise if your reach is still small and you want to understand who your main audience is, what their needs and preferences are.

If you run ads from your account from the Instagram app, you can only do so from your business account. nine0003

Switching an Instagram profile to a business account

A business profile is a commercial section on Instagram that can be linked to a company's Facebook account.

To switch to a business profile, open the "Account" section in "Settings", select "Switch to a professional account". Next, you need to select a category: "Author" or "Business". If you are going to develop a personal brand or become a blogger, then use the first option. If you offer services or goods, then the second. nine0003

Publication of posts and Stories for promotion

To advertise any of your publications, make sure that it meets all the requirements of Instagram. Click on the "Promote" button, select the purpose of the ad and work with the settings.

Advertising in Stories can be launched immediately in the application: publish a story, open it, select “More” and “Promote” in the lower right corner.

We also launch targeted advertising in Instagram Stories, only when choosing placements, you need to remove the “Feed” value. nine0003

Don't forget platform specifics. If you want to make your content informative, it's best to keep it as simple as possible, even fun. A proven way to connect with your audience on social media is to communicate with them at ease.

Determining the goal of an advertising campaign

Setting up Instagram ads has three types of goals:

Increase the number of profile visits.
Increase website traffic.

To help you set a goal, go to the Promote button below your post and select Learn how to set a goal.

Setting up Instagram ads by ad types

Setting up instagram ads is characterized by the ability to very accurately select your target audience, which will display your ads.

What type of Instagram ad can you choose:

advertising in Stories;
photo advertising;
video advertising;
carousel advertising;
advertising with a selection;
advertising in the "Interesting" section.

Study the statistics, conversions and ROI of your promoted posts to understand what type of ad is performing best.

Target audience selection

Target audience is a group of users interested in your offer. All of them can easily become real customers and provide you with a return on advertising costs. nine0003

How to define your target audience? Make a portrait of your client by finding answers to such questions: what is his gender and age? Where is he from? What is his hobby? Complement this portrait, study the results of your advertising campaigns and user requests.

When setting up an audience when you launch an advertising post, you will be faced with a choice: automatically create an audience for advertising, relying on Instagram's internal algorithms, or create it manually by choosing the settings yourself.

Naturally, it is more expedient to independently determine the audience for impressions. Then your chances of targeted actions from users will be higher.

Setting the budget and schedule of the advertising campaign

You must select the daily budget, currency, and also specify the validity period.

When you change the settings, your AC's total budget and estimated audience reach will be automatically calculated.

Advertising Preview

The "Next" arrow will take you to a tab with a preview and choice of payment method. Please check all information on your advertisement.

Passing moderation

Make sure everything is fine with your ad and click "Create Promotion". The creative will go to moderation, where it will stay from one hour to two days.

Collection of statistics and basic analytics

Instagram ad performance metrics will be available after ads start running. In your business profile, find the "View Statistics" button and track these key metrics:

Coverage . Data on the number of unique users who viewed your post will help you understand how much one unique impression of your ad cost. Comparing this indicator with other metrics, you will conclude whether the cooperation turned out to be beneficial.
Impressions . This metric will help you calculate the CTR for your ad. It depends, for example, on how much you pay for advertising by CPM.

Clicks

Target actions . The parameter will show how many users interacted with your advertising publication in the way you need.

Always count ROI. This is the rate of return on your investment. After calculating it, you will see if advertising on Instagram paid off. The investments will be considered covered, and cooperation can be called profitable if the ROI is more than 100%. nine0003

How to launch ads on Instagram through a Facebook profile

Fully setting up Instagram ads is possible only after connecting a business profile to the Facebook advertising account.

Advertising on Instagram through Facebook opens up a lot of opportunities: retargeting, dynamic creatives, deep analytics.

How does Instagram advertising work? It is targeted, that is, you select the target audience according to a set of characteristics, and Instagram shows your ad to just such users. Therefore, before launching an ad, you should know your audience well and work with the settings. nine0003

Preparing an advertising campaign

Before publishing the first advertising post, work out the strategy and key nuances on which your AC will be based:

Calculate the advertising budget

The amount of expenses for attracted users should not exceed the margin.

Work out the content format

Instagram provides several types of content, and all of it can become promotional. Test different creatives and determine the most successful option based on the results. Ad format requirements can be found in the official Facebook guidelines. nine0003

Setting up an advertising account

Create an Instagram account and link it to Business Manager. To work through the Ads Manager account, you need administrator rights for the Facebook page to which the account is linked.

How to run ads on Instagram through Ads Manager

Go to your Facebook page. Find the inverted triangle button in the upper right corner, click it and go to the "Create ad" section.

Determine the purpose of the advertising campaign

The choice of target is important because it sets the logic for ad delivery algorithms. Goals are defined by the categories Awareness (if you plan to talk about your product), Consideration (you want the user to interact with your ad), Conversions (you expect a certain action from the user that saw your ad).

Set up a budget and schedule for impressions

At the bottom, you can refine one of the options for optimizing the AC. Split testing allows you to run several ads at once and evaluate the effectiveness of each of them. Budget optimization is needed in order to distribute money by day and different ads within the same advertising campaign. nine0003

Setting the target audience

Choose the audience based on where your traffic will be directed: to the site, to the application, etc. It is better to manually set this target, based on the nuances of your target audience. You can group target users by age, gender, geography, interests, and other parameters.

It is clear that by this stage you should have a portrait of your target audience ready.

Choice of placements (placements)

Decide on placements - sites where you want to show your ads. If you only want Instagram, uncheck everyone else. Also, decide if it's a feed or Instagram Stories (or both).

Specify budget and schedule

It's best to run CC on Instagram for at least three days so that the algorithms have time to study your audience. It is also better to set the budget not to the minimum in order to get at least some coverage. nine0003

Preparing an advertisement

Decide on the ad format: single image or video, carousel, collection. To add pictures and videos, there is a section "Media objects". You will also need to specify the type of link for the ad, write the text, add the site url, etc.

All requirements for files are in the settings cabinet.

Avoid advertising identical creatives in the feed and Stories. You can see how your ad will be shown to users by clicking Promotion Preview. By clicking the "Create promotion" button, you will send your publication for moderation. nine0003

Payment and launch of advertising via Instagram

When setting up an advertising campaign, you choose for which user action the budget will be charged. You can pay for impressions, link clicks, landing page views.

To pay for your RCs, enter the required card or PayPal account details, go to "Payment", specify the country and payment details.

The cost of advertising on Instagram

The more competitive the industry, the more brands vying for the attention of your audience, the more you will pay. Targeted ads on Instagram can reach $3.5 per click. nine0003

The cost of advertising on Instagram varies. Prices are influenced, among other things, by the settings of the Republic of Kazakhstan on Facebook. For example, CPCs will differ for different age groups.

It is difficult to say how much it will cost you to advertise with a blogger, since it is problematic to derive any average figure. You should focus more on the correctness of the choice. The successful selection of an influencer will give you the most “warmed up” audience ready to buy.

Remember that all Instagram ad spending should be considered in terms of conversions and positive ROI. nine0003

What else is important to know about advertising with bloggers

You need to start cooperation with a blogger on Instagram by researching his audience and statistics. You can request the data you are interested in. For example, statistics on reach and impressions. This is also necessary in order to evaluate the proposed price, to understand whether it will justify the results of the work.

Make sure the audience is active. In addition to analyzing the blogger's page itself, you can use the Socialblade.com service, which shows a graph of subscriber growth. If the line is jumpy, there may have been subscriber cheats. nine0003

How to order Instagram advertising from bloggers and influencers

Advertising for most major influencers is usually handled by a manager. As a rule, contacts for communication are indicated in the bio.

Sometimes the terms of cooperation are placed in the "Actual stories" tab with the name "Advertising" or PR. There will be all the relevant information on accommodation: the price, how and where to apply.

Sometimes additional data is needed. Then write to direct, especially if a blogger with a small audience is a beginner. In this case, discussing cooperation through direct is a completely normal tactic. nine0003

Where to find bloggers to advertise

The easiest way to start looking is directly on Instagram. Remember who is the opinion leader from your field, try to break through someone by hashtags.

Here are some ways to find an influencer:

Search by hashtags or geotags.
View on Instagram exchanges.
Pick up using telegram bots.

You must know the portrait of your target audience in order to evaluate subscribers to bloggers' publics according to the criterion of compliance. If you see that a sufficient percentage of the audience is your potential customers, proceed to evaluate the following criteria. Analyze blogger audience. In addition to size and activity, it is also important how it fits into the portrait of your target audience. Check engagement. It should not be less than 8-10%. Analyze, as far as possible, the quantity and quality of ads on the page. nine0003

Buy ads from multiple bloggers and compare results.

How much does blogger advertising cost?

The situation with blogger advertising on Instagram is still quite chaotic. The average price has not been formed, and even the placement rules are different for everyone.

Although it's hard to predict the results of an influencer placement, these ads can generate more targeted actions at a lower cost than you would have to spend on a targeted one.

The price of a post or story depends on the popularity of the influencer, the format of cooperation, the amount of advertising on the blog. It varies from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars. nine0003

How to analyze the effectiveness of advertising with bloggers on Instagram

In order to track the effectiveness of advertising integration with a blogger based on the results of cooperation, prepare in advance:

Is your goal to increase sales? Make it so that new subscribers are motivated to buy something from you. For example, offer a small discount. Let the blogger tell his audience about it. Use a unique promotional code to track such buyers.
Do you want to get visitors to the site? Then use UTM tags. Make sure the links point to the correct page. If you lead customers to the order form, then check whether everything in it works as it should.
Track audience reaction to an advertisement. Do not let things take their course, especially in the early days. Constantly monitor, answer in the comments.
Be sure to consider the indicator of return on investment - ROI. If, when buying ads from a blogger, you used promotional codes or UTM tags, then use the data from them to calculate the profitability. nine0091

It is also important not to forget at the stage when you agree on the terms of cooperation with the blogger, to agree with him to provide screenshots of account statistics after the advertisement is published.

FAQ

What is advertising on Instagram?

Instagram is a great platform for finding clients. Advertising on this popular platform provides access to a huge audience (more than a billion active users per month) and the ability to make direct sales.

You can launch advertising on Instagram directly from your own account, from your Facebook advertising account, order it from bloggers, promote through barter, in public, engage in mutual PR, mass liking and mass following. You can do it for money and for free.

Paid advertising is a powerful Instagram marketing tool that complements all the efforts that brands put into creating content for the feed and stories.

To effectively plan advertising campaigns and have access to statistics and analytics, you need to open an Instagram business account. nine0003

What is targeted advertising on Instagram?

Targeted advertising - promotion of an advertising message that you launch to your target audience. This is the official ad on Instagram. It is paid, you buy it from Facebook.

Such advertising makes it possible to reach your potential audience, excluding the human factor, since it depends solely on the settings you have chosen. In order not to make a mistake with this, answer yourself the following questions: what result do you want to get from an advertising campaign, where the Internet audience will be redirected from advertising. nine0003

You don't need to have an Instagram account to run targeted ads. In your advertising message, you can send users to the site, landing page, application form, etc.

How much does advertising on Instagram cost?

Advertising on Instagram has a relatively low price, because mobile traffic prevails here, and it is cheaper.

The data for 2021 shows the following figures: you will pay on average between $0.4 and $1 per click on Instagram. Any kind of clicks on the ad are taken into account, including reactions, comments, likes. nine0003

What forms the cost of advertising on Instagram:

Purpose of the advertising campaign.
Audience size.
Your advertising budget.
CTR.

It is important to optimize your advertising spending. If you are targeting a wide audience, then try less expensive campaigns first to get your brand out to the target audience. Work on engagement. Perhaps it would be more correct to lead visitors to your web resource. If you have an inexpensive product, then impulse shopping on Instagram can be successful.