How much does instagram ads cost 2020

How Much Do Instagram Ads Cost in 2022? (+ How to Save)

While Facebook and Instagram advertising work using the same Ads Manager, their respective advertising costs vary. With Facebook being around longer, having more data, and more ad placements compared to its younger adopted sibling platform, we do find that more often than not, Instagram is slightly more expensive than Facebook in some instances. While that is the case, don’t let it deter you from exploring this lucrative and effective visual counterpart in the Facebook ecosystem. With fewer ad placements, increased competition for impression share, you may pay slightly more to use Instagram, but you may also pleasantly see it being much more cost-effective than the results you’re getting with Facebook.

Paid advertising is a powerful marketing tool on Instagram and complements what brands are able to do in their Feeds, Stories, and Explore tabs. While Reels and IGTV don’t yet have ad placements, we may very well see them added as placement as the platform continues to scale and the need for more impressions comes about. Like Facebook ads, Instagram ads offer advanced targeting and flexibility so as to be accessible for just about any business. If this visual platform is a popular channel for your target audience, you may want to advertise on Instagram. To help you understand the cost, we’re going to cover:

How Instagram ads work.
What makes Instagram advertising worth the price.
Factors that influence Instagram ad costs.
Average cost per click, cost per engagement, and cost per thousand impressions on Instagram.
Ways to keep your Instagram ad costs down

Read on to learn about the workings, advantages, and cost of advertising on Instagram this year.

How do Instagram ads work?

Depending on your campaign objective, ads appearing on Instagram can have up to 18 call-to-action button options, can link to your website, and give users options to download applications or shop online stores.

You don’t actually even need an Instagram account to advertise on Instagram. Since Facebook is its parent company, all you need a Facebook Business Page. However, it is best to have an Instagram account so you can familiarize yourself with content that resonates best with your target audience and complement and amplify your organic Instagram marketing efforts.

To set up Instagram Ads, use Facebook’s Ads Manager to set up campaigns, ad sets where you select your budget, target audience, ad placements, and optimization options. Similar to Facebook Ads, your ads will run within the selected time frame, budget parameters, audience selection, and optimization goals.

What makes Instagram advertising worth the price?

Advertising on social media brings many benefits, and there are some particular benefits of paying for ad impressions on Instagram rather than simply running campaigns and promotions directly from your business’s account.

Advanced targeting

With over 1 billion monthly users, Instagram ranks second after Facebook. These platforms have an incredibly robust arsenal of targeting data and since Facebook owns Instagram, Instagram advertising utilizes the same comprehensive demographic and geographic data. This advanced targeting is what makes Facebook Ads work so well, as you can be incredibly prescriptive when targeting various audiences. Whether you are utilizing Facebook’s native audiences based on interests, behaviors, or other demographics, or utilizing your own custom audiences that utilize your Pixel or SDK, email lists, or other sources, you can find success in reaching the right people in your prospecting and retargeting campaigns.

Higher engagement rates

Instagram is known for its high engagement rates—organically and through paid ads. Images on Instagram receive an average of 23% more engagement than when shared on Facebook. When it comes to organic engagement, brands on Instagram say that they have about 4% of their followers seeing their content compared to the nearly non-existent organic reach that Facebook has today. While it’s better, it’s still wise to pay to play in order to expand your reach and visibility with paid ads. While any form of visual content can perform well, brands typically see more engagement on video ads—about 38% more. As a visual platform, images and videos are powerful in driving more engagement than on other more text-based social platforms.

External links

Instagram does not currently allow clickable links in organic posts. You can include a link in your caption or message, but the recipient has to copy and paste it into their browser or visit the link in your Instagram bio. With Instagram advertising, you can include outside links, which enables you to designate a destination URL to your website or another external URL. To be able to better track website traffic from your Instagram Ads, it’s recommended to use your own domain as you should have your Pixel implemented there, whereas you may not have it on other website URLs that you don’t control.

Longer videos

Instagram Feed and Explore video can be up to 60 seconds in duration and while Stories are typically up to 15 seconds in duration, if you run ads in these three ad placements, you can have up to 2 minutes of video content. This gives you more opportunity to convey both your brand and the features and benefits of your offer through your products and/or services.

How much do Instagram ads cost?

Let’s take a look at the average cost per click, cost per engagement, and cost per thousand impressions on Instagram.

Instagram cost per click (CPC)

For all metrics, Instagram cost per click in 2021 ranges from $0.40-$0.70. This takes into account all clicks that happen on an ad, which includes not only link clicks, but likes/reactions, comments, and shares.

For ads that have a destination URL, Instagram cost per click in 2021 ranges from $0.50-$0.95.

Instagram cost per engagement (CPE)

Instagram cost per engagement in 2021 ranges from $0.01-0.05.

Instagram cost per thousand impressions (CPM)

Instagram cost per one thousand impressions in 2021 ranges between $2.50-$3.50 for better-performing campaigns and their respective ad sets.

When it comes to CPMs, our findings show that Facebook tends to be higher than Instagram, by nearly 2x but CPCs tend to be lower by nearly half on Facebook compared to Instagram.

Image via AdEspresso

Facebook vs Instagram advertising costs

While Facebook and Instagram advertising work using the same Ads Manager, their respective advertising costs vary (see how much it costs to advertise on Facebook in 2021 here). With Facebook being around longer, having more data, and more ad placements compared to its younger adopted sibling platform, we do find that more often than not, Instagram is slightly more expensive than Facebook in some instances.

While that is the case, don’t let it deter you from exploring this lucrative and effective visual counterpart in the Facebook ecosystem. With fewer ad placements and increased competition for impression share, you may pay slightly more to use Instagram, but you may also pleasantly see it being much more cost-effective than the results you’re getting with Facebook.

Factors that influence Instagram ads costs

Similar to other platforms, Instagram ad pricing is influenced by a number of variables.

Campaign objective

Campaign objectives can cause your advertising costs to be automatically higher or lower, depending on which you choose and how it relates to where your target audience is in the funnel.

For example, if you select a brand awareness campaign objective, it will be lower in cost than something lower down the funnel and that has a higher value objective, such as conversions. Having broader, colder audiences see your ad to drive brand awareness is a lower-value action compared to targeting a user further down funnel—who are more familiar with your brand and offerings, and ready to open their wallet or take a higher-value action.

Audience size

If you are targeting broader audiences, they are typically lower in cost as there is less competition for a group of people. As you narrow your audiences, perhaps by reducing their geotargeting or age ranges, you may see the price go up as competition for those eyeballs increases in parallel. Retargeting audiences are typically smaller as well, hence why we often see higher costs in retargeting campaigns.

Budget

Budget also influences Instagram ad costs because if you have a small budget, it may take longer to get out of the Learning Phase if your campaign or ad set is starting anew. Costs may be more expensive at first before the system learns and understands your campaign type and optimization goals, and how your audience engages with your ads. If your ads are well engaged with, Facebook and Instagram will reward you with lower costs over time.

Click-through rate

If CTR is low, then we may see higher costs as the system thinks there may be some disconnect between your target audience and what you’re messaging in your ads. You want your ads to resonate with your target audience and CTR Is a strong indicator of that. Aim for a healthy CTR which is about 2%. If you have a healthy CTR, you should see your costs decrease.

How to lower your Instagram ads costs

Make the most of your budget by selecting funnel-appropriate campaign objectives to start. If you are targeting colder, broader, prospecting audiences, test less expensive campaigns to introduce your brand to audiences with an awareness, engagement, or better yet, a website traffic campaign so that these users leave Instagram and get to your website and tagged with the Pixel so you can later retarget them if they don’t convert on that first click. If you’re new to Instagram Ads, you can drive sales from the first interaction and click, but more often than not, users will need to have several interactions with your brands in order to develop trust, perhaps do some shopping and comparing, and then come back to you through retargeting or other means to open up their wallets. If you have a low-cost product that doesn’t need much research, impulse buys can be successful from Instagram.

Another way to lower your Instagram costs is to use automatic placements in the ad set level and serve across both Facebook and Instagram. By having more placement liquidity, the system can use its algorithm to determine where to best serve your ads, thus giving them more options across both platforms and more ad placements, thus, lowering competition on Instagram’s three current ad placements, thus lowering your costs.

You will also want to test audiences with different ad variations by testing the different lines of ad copy and creatives – images and videos. By running tests, you can learn what resonates with your audiences and it can help improve your engagement rates and CTR, thus, also helping lower your costs and making your budget go further.

How much do Instagram ads cost? [recap]

Instagram continues to grow and the advertising options only become more robust. It’s not yet saturated and it’s safe to assume that more ad placements will come our way.

Give Instagram Ads a test and see how it fairs in comparison to Facebook Ads and other advertising platforms you may be running on. It may end up being an important part of your funnel by driving more brand awareness and engagement or it may end up bringing a primary source of revenue.

Instagram ads cost per click: $0.40-$0.70 (link clicks, likes, reactions, comments, shares)
Instagram ads cost per click to destination URL: $0. 50-$0.95.
Instagram ads cost per engagement: $0.01-0.05.
Instagram ads cost per thousand impressions: $2.50-$3.50

Want more cost information? Check out similar posts:

How Much Does Google Ads Cost?
How Much Do Facebook Ads Cost?

How Much Does it Cost to Advertise on Instagram?

In many ways advertising on Instagram is the same as advertising on Facebook. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, with Instagram being part of the Facebook network. We recently covered how to work out the cost of your Facebook ads. This article shifts the focus to Facebook's very visual, rapidly increasingly popular sibling, Instagram. Just how much does it cost to advertise on Instagram?

As with Facebook, there is no set price for advertising on Instagram. You create a bid for your ad’s placement. In theory, Instagram will place the ad of the company that makes the highest bid for any particular advertising slot. In reality, it is much more complicated than this, and you can not guarantee that Instagram will accept any ad you provide and serve it on the Instagram accounts you bid for. There is more to obtaining a spot for your ad than just making the highest bid.

You can expect that you will have to pay somewhere between 20 cents and $2 per click (CPC) on an Instagram campaign. According to Revealbot data, the average Instagram CPC in July 2021 in the United States was $1.28 per click, as opposed to 2022 CPC which is $1.33 per click. However, if you prefer to run your ads on a cost per mille (CPM) basis, focusing on impressions, the average Instagram CPM in July 2021 in the United States was $8.51, compared to 2022 CPM which is $10.39. In comparison, the average Facebook CPC in July 2021 was $1.01 per click, and the average Facebook CPM was $12.91.

Smart Insights has collated statistics comparing clickthrough rates (CTRs) for display ads, paid social ads, and Google Ads. Unfortunately, the CTRs have generally dropped across most types of online advertising over recent years. They found that the ad clickthrough rate in the Instagram feed was 0.22% in Q1 2020. This was significantly lower than in the previous year when it was 0.60% in Q1 2019. However, the CTR for Instagram Stories was higher at 0.33%. As a comparison, the average Facebook CTR in the newsfeed is 1.11%, also a downwards trend from 2019.

Instagram advertising has increased markedly over the last few years. In March 2017 they enjoyed their 1 millionth advertiser.

How Much Does it Cost to Advertise on Instagram?

Instagram is Part of the Facebook Ads Platform
How do Instagram Ads Compare with Facebook Ads?
Advantages of Instagram Advertising
Key Factors Contributing to Advertising Cost
Creating Your Instagram Ads in the Most Cost-Effective Way
Native Ads Work Best on Instagram
Frequently Asked Questions

Instagram is Part of the Facebook Ads Platform

If you read our earlier article on the cost of Facebook ads, you will have seen that Facebook offers Instagram as one of the locations you can bid to place your Facebook ads. When you bid for your Facebook (group) ads, they encourage you to position your ads at the following locations:

Feeds:

Facebook News Feed (desktop or mobile, depending on how people access Facebook)
Instagram feed (mobile feed when using the app only)
Facebook Marketplace
Facebook Video feeds (on Facebook Watch and Facebook News Feed)
Facebook right column (on computers only)
Instagram Explore
Messenger Inbox

Stories:

Facebook Stories
Instagram Stories
Messenger stories

In-Stream:

Facebook in-stream videos
IGTV videos
Instagram Reels

Search:

Facebook search results

Messages:

Messenger sponsored messages

In-article:

Facebook Instant Articles

Apps:

Audience Network native, banner, and interstitial
Audience Network rewarded videos

Oculus:

Oculus Mobile App Feed
Oculus Mobile App Search Results

Every Facebook advertiser is encouraged to add Instagram to their advertising preferences – they are given discounts for doing so.

How do Instagram Ads Compare with Facebook Ads?

While some companies might choose a mix of both Instagram and Facebook ads, it will very much depend on your target market. It makes the most sense to advertise where your customers (and potential new clients) spend their time.

Facebook has the advantage of its vast user base. It reported a colossal 2.89 billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2021. Sure, your target audience may not regularly use Facebook, but most do. Also, as you can see from the above list of advertising types, Facebook has more advertising options than Instagram does.

On the other hand, if your target audience matches Instagram's main demographic, you will benefit from advertising there.

According to data reported by Statista, about 60% of Instagram's users are aged between 18 and 34. Although the balance between the genders is relatively even overall (51% females, 49% males), it is less so in the 18-34 range. Overall, 32.1% of Instagram users are males aged 18-34, while 29.9% are females of the same age. Instagram is also the third most popular social network for teenagers in the United States. In Fall 2020, 25% of US teenagers ranked Instagram their favorite social app, after only Snapchat (34%) and TikTok (29%). Facebook was preferred by only 2% of the teenage respondents.

Clearly, if you sell to people under 34, you should seriously consider including Instagram ads in your marketing mix. You might well consider some Facebook advertising, too, although less so if Generation Z is your target market.

Advantages of Instagram Advertising

Assuming that your target audience spends time on their Instagram apps, there are excellent reasons for adding Instagram to your marketing mix.

Traditionally, Instagram has a higher clickthrough rate than Facebook. While not true currently, as SmartInsights has shown, that has been the exception rather than the norm. At most times, Instagram's CTR has been much higher than that of its older sibling.

Like Facebook, Instagram provides advanced targeting opportunities with its ads. You can home in on your target audience and not waste funds advertising to the wrong people. You can target your ads based on location, demographics, interests, behavior, and lookalike audiences, as well as letting Instagram/Facebook target automatically. You can also create custom audiences and retarget those people who have already interacted with your business.

Instagram can also drive higher average order values (AOV) than other social networks, depending on your industry. For example, research by eCommerce personalization platform Nosto found that Instagram achieved an AOV for paid posts of $103 on mobile for fashion retailers. In comparison, Facebook's paid AOV was $69, and Snapchat's paid AOV was $57.

Instagram has far higher engagement rates compared to Facebook. According to data in We Are Social's Digital 2021 July Global Statshot Report, the average engagement rate for all post types on Instagram is 0. 83%. Engagement for photo posts is 0.81%, video posts 0.61%, and carousel posts 1.01%. In comparison, Facebook’s average engagement rates are 0.11% (all posts), 0.16% (photo posts), 0.13% (video posts), 0.05% (link posts), and 0.17% (status posts).

Key Factors Contributing to Advertising Cost

As with Facebook advertising, three main factors affect what you will have to pay for your Instagram ads:

The amount you are willing to bid for your campaign
Your ad quality, taking into account such factors as feedback from people viewing or hiding the ad and assessments of low-quality attributes in the ad, such as withholding information, sensationalized language, and engagement bait
Your Estimated Action Rates – how likely that Facebook / Instagram believes that people will take the action for which you target your ads, e.g., how likely are people are to convert when they see your ad

Estimated action rates combined with ad quality measure ad relevance. Instagram subsidizes those ads they consider relevant to the people who will view your ads. A lower bid could succeed over a higher bid from somebody else because of better relevance.

Instagram now uses ad relevance diagnostics in place of their previous ad relevance score. You can use ad relevance diagnostics to diagnose underperforming ads. Ad relevance diagnostics look at your quality ranking, engagement rate ranking, and conversion rate ranking. Ideally, you want all three factors to be average or above.

Facebook explains these factors in more detail in their Help section.

A crucial factor from this is that your Instagram advertising price is not affected by your bid alone. You can reduce your advertising costs by creating quality ads that people will value and focusing your ad content on the most suitable people.

Obviously, competition will also play an essential role in determining your Instagram advertising cost. For example, if you have multiple people bidding for the same target audience as you, you may have a bidding war, increasing the overall cost. Some of the many factors affecting competition include:

Holidays and events – competition is higher for holidays and special events. The CPC rises dramatically in the days leading up to Christmas, for instance.
Day of the week – Instagram users engage more on weekdays than at weekends. This makes it more likely that you will pay more mid-week than on a Saturday or Sunday.
Your market – some industries have higher advertising rates than others, to a large degree due to the level of competition. Also, firms targeting females tend to pay more than those targeting males as females engage more on Instagram typically.

Creating Your Instagram Ads in the Most Cost-Effective Way

Too many people place ads on Instagram (and often Facebook) without knowing what they are doing. It should be no surprise, therefore, that these people often lose money. You need to think carefully about the people you are targeting and create the perfect ad for these people.

Ads Manager is the starting point for running ads on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or Audience Network. It's an all-in-one tool for creating ads, managing when and where they'll run, and tracking how well your campaigns perform.

Facebook / Instagram splits its Ads Manager into three sections:

Campaign
Ad Set
Ad

They allow you to build your ads up following these three parts:

1. Set Campaign Details

You begin by selecting your objective for your entire Instagram Marketing Campaign

There is no value going into this process without knowing what you wish to gain out of it. You need to begin your campaign by setting campaign goals and objectives.

The Facebook / Instagram Ads Manager offers you 11 different marketing objectives in three categories:

Awareness

Brand Awareness
Reach

Consideration

Traffic
Engagement
App Installs
Video Views
Lead Generation
Messages

Conversion

Conversions
Catalogue Sales
Store Traffic

Make sure you don’t select an irrelevant objective for Instagram – for instance focusing on Messages (which is designed for those wanting to get more people to send messages to your business in Messenger).

If you are just beginning your advertising on Instagram, it is a good idea to optimize for conversions. Instagram will target your campaigns to give you your best results at a lower price.

2. Set Details for Your Ad Set

You may have various settings to choose from, depending on your preferred objective. For instance, if you opt to focus on increasing traffic you are asked whether you want to target a website, app, or Messenger.

You are then asked whether you want to create an offer to help encourage people to convert, depending on your objective.

You are then given the opportunity to define your audience. If you want the best price for your ads and the best ROI on them, you want to be smart and create a selected audience.

You are given quite a few options for targeting your ads, and you can save your audiences so that they can be reused in future campaigns.

Don’t waste money by broad targeting. You might think that you will have a higher chance of converting if 10 million people see your ad – but the majority of these people have no wish to buy anything from you.

You can target based on:

Location
Age
Gender
Languages
Demographics
Interests
Behaviors
Connections

Facebook / Instagram will give you an indication of your estimated daily reach and expected post engagement. They will indicate whether you have targeted your audience specifically or broadly.

You then choose your placements. This is where you select to focus your advertising on Instagram, rather than Facebook. You will need to deselect Automatic Placements and instead opt for Edit Placements. Amongst the options you encounter are Instagram Feed and Instagram Stories. The device type doesn’t matter as you can’t select Instagram for Desktop.

It is a good idea to do this even if you want to do a combined campaign involving Facebook, too. By selecting your placements yourself, you have more control over your campaign optimization.

You have a few other options here, for instance, you can choose to target all mobile devices, or just iOS or Android.

Finally, in the Ad Set section, you provide your budget. You can either pick a daily budget limit or give a total Lifetime Budget amount for your entire ad set.

When you set a daily budget, you create an average, rather than an absolute limit. This is particularly important if you choose to set a budget based on an action. Instagram may be able to control the number of times they serve ads (thus limiting the impressions you have to pay for). But it is harder for them to manage how many times people click on a particular day. There are days where many people may click. If you have CPC pricing, you will go over your budget that day, but Instagram will try and compensate tomorrow.

You also have the chance to state the timeframe in which you want your ads to run.

You also have a few options to optimize your ad delivery. For instance, you can choose whether you want your Instagram ad to run multiple times per day to a person, or just the once. You can select what kind of optimizations you wish for ad delivery. For instance, you can ask Instagram to concentrate on delivering your ads to people most likely to click on a link or view a landing page. You may ask them to show your ads to as many people (within your defined audience) as possible, and focus on impressions.

You also define the method by which Facebook / Instagram charges you, e.g., are you paying cost per click (CPC), or by impressions (CPM), or by another metric?

You also have the option to select Manual or Automatic Bidding. Many people recommend that newcomers go with Automatic Bidding, but you may prefer to bid manually once you are experienced with advertising on Instagram.

If you opt for Manual Bidding you have a further choice to make: should you set Maximum or Average bids?

If you select Maximum bid, then Instagram won’t run your ads if the cost per result would be higher than your bid. You would choose this if your goal is to maximize profit.

If you select Average bid, Instagram optimizes your ad delivery to maximize your ROI – they call this the Pacing method. The Pacing method ensures that you don’t use up all of your budget early in the day, and miss out on profitable opportunities later in the day. You would select the Average bid if you want to maximize delivery, i.e., you would get more conversions, but some may cost more than what would otherwise have been your maximum bid.

You should probably begin with automatic bidding until you can build up data showing your cost per result.

One common suggestion the experts make is that if you opt for Manual bidding, select a figure towards the bottom end of Facebook’s suggested bid range.

3. Set Details Relating to Your Specific Ads

This section focuses on your actual Instagram ads.

Your first option is to select an ad format. You can choose from:

Carousel
Single Image
Single Video
Slideshow

Note that the option of Collection is currently only available for the Mobile Facebook feed – not Instagram.

If you aim to advertise using Instagram Stories you can select from:

Instagram Stories Single Image
Instagram Stories Single Video

If you want to keep your ad costs down, carousel ads are typically seen as providing the best value for your money.

Once you select the format for your ad, you provide all of the other details necessary to create the ad. These include any links, images, and videos – as well as the all-important Call to Action text.

Native Ads Work Best on Instagram

Instagram users expect to receive relevant, interesting posts. They can spot a traditional ad, and these perform poorly. If you want your ad to work on Instagram, it needs to look like a typical post.

This means that may not receive the best results from the ads with the lowest CPM. Your ad may not cost you much to deliver. But that is of little value to you if everybody bypasses it.

It is essential that you create content that your target audience appreciates. Don’ try and push sales with your first ads. It is better to begin by creating top-of-funnel posts, to introduce your brand to the people who you are targeting.

Instagram recognizes this too. Take a close look at your relevance diagnostics when targeting your content. You need to ensure your ads:

are perceived as being high quality
produce conversions
spur interest
aren't perceived as clickbait or controversial

Instagram recognizes this too. Your Relevance Score is an excellent guide as to how well you target your content.

Instagram is one of the fastest-growing social networks. A few years ago, few people included Instagram in their top echelon of social networks. Now it is considered one of the leading players.

Most firms who advertise online, or work with influencers who assist them in their marketing, should give serious consideration to including Instagram in their marketing mix.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does it cost to promote on Instagram?

How much does it cost to promote on Instagram? To promote on Instagram, expect to pay somewhere between 20 cents and $2 per click (CPC) on an Instagram campaign. The cost will depend on the industry and the competition.

How much does it cost to advertise on Instagram 2021?

To advertise on Instagram in 2021, expect to pay somewhere between 20 cents and $2 per click (CPC). According to Revealbot data, the average Instagram CPC in July 2021 in the United States was $1.28 per click.

Is it worth paying for advertising on Instagram?

Paying for advertising on Instagram is worth it, according to statistics. Instagram’s ad revenues may reach over $18 billion by 2021, and many big brands pay big bucks to advertise on the platform. No matter the size of your business, Instagram ads are a powerful way to reach a new audience.

How much does Instagram and Facebook ads cost?

To advertise on the social media platforms Instagram and Facebook, expect to spend big bucks. You can pay around $7.19 per 1000 impressions on Facebook and $7.91 per 1000 impressions on Instagram.

How much do Instagram ads cost 2020?

On average. expect to pay somewhere between 20 cents and $2 per click (CPC) on an Instagram campaign. Instagram ads are only going up in cost.

How much to charge for advertising on Instagram

Today, in the accounts of Instagram bloggers, you can find ads from both start-ups and large corporations. The price tag for one advertising post can vary from several hundred to several million dollars. Such a huge price range challenges all influencers in assessing the fair value of their services. We offer you to figure out how much to charge for advertising on Instagram, and on what factors the cost depends.

Why you can get money on Instagram

Influencer marketing continues to gain momentum. About 7 out of 10 users rely on the opinion of bloggers when making a decision. Influencers allow you to establish closer contact with the audience, drive huge streams of payback Internet traffic and improve sales.

Using these market trends and having an active audience on Instagram, you can earn money by promoting brands and their products. There are several options for earning:

sponsored publications;
affiliate marketing.

Let's consider each of them in more detail.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing involves earning a certain commission on the sale of partner products, attracting new customers. The task of the influencer in this case is to conduct a review, talk about the benefits of the product and add a referral link or a promo code for the purchase to the description. If users like the recommendation, they go to the partner's website and make a purchase, the blogger will receive a certain commission from the funds they spend.

Affiliate marketing has more flexibility than sponsored publications. A blogger can decide for himself what format of publications to choose, what, how, and when to write, but earnings also depend solely on the actions of the influencer himself. Working according to this scheme, it is important to choose the right products on offer so that they are ideally suited to your target audience.

Assess the quality of the audience

When a brand pays you to post, it is actually buying views, likes, clicks from your target audience. And you have to be honest with the advertiser about what response you can offer. Selling your influence without actually having it is a recipe for disaster.

Therefore, before placing a price tag, you should definitely evaluate the quality of your audience. Detailed account audience analytics can be done with trendHERO .

The service allows:

to find out the demographics of subscribers;
compare the interests of your audience with the values of the brand;
see how the number of subscribers grows;
calculate the audience engagement indicator;
Check your account for bots.

Advertisers now value quality over quantity. Nobody wants to overpay for bots in subscribers and “dead” souls, so before cooperation, you should definitely check the quality of your account. So, if necessary, you can increase the level of audience engagement, clean your account from bots, and avoid being blacklisted by unscrupulous bloggers.

Please note that advertisers can get detailed profile statistics without you. Therefore, it makes no sense to hide cheated activity and subscribers.

How to calculate how much to charge for advertising?

The price of advertising depends on many factors:

format;
the quality and quantity of the audience;
brand budget;
influencer requests.

There is no single magic calculation formula suitable for everyone. Therefore, below we suggest that you familiarize yourself with several different ways to determine the cost of advertising on Instagram.

Hourly

Hourly is a good option for aspiring influencers who don't yet have a huge following but already know they can create quality content.

This is also a good option for those who post content that requires a lot more skill than just taking photos or videos. For example, if you conduct a full product review for your publications, apply technical editing skills, use special effects, drones, then it is logical that you should receive monetary compensation for your efforts and time spent.

How much a blogger will charge for advertising in this case can be calculated using the following formula:

Hourly rate * number of hours spent on content production + any additional costs.

Calculation example for creating a sponsored post at an hourly rate of $50:

30 minutes to research the brand and competitors;
60 minutes to generate a publication idea and determine creative direction;
45 minutes product photography;
60 minutes for photo editing and retouching;
15 minutes to publish the material and write a caption to the post.

Total: 3.5 hours to create a publication is $175 to pay.

Additional expenses may be the cost of the necessary props, the cost of paying for the work of an assistant, travel and other expenses that the blogger incurred to create high-quality content.

When invoicing, be sure to include all hours spent, from the time it takes to generate an idea. As for the additional costs, then everything is individual. For example, some even include in the price the travel time and the money spent on gasoline and the purchase of props. Others are frivolous about such calculations and perform minor duties just like that.

It's worth mentioning right off the bat that not all brands may like the idea of paying an hourly rate. In some cases, you will have to calculate in advance how long it will take you to produce in order to quote a fixed fee. Of course, it may take you longer to create content than you planned, or you may be able to complete it much earlier. But knowing the estimated cost, companies can plan costs.

Engagement payment calculation

The brand wants to get views, new loyal customers, likes and comments from cooperation. Logically, it makes sense to charge for the actual engagement of users under a post. This option will be attractive for those who do not want to keep track of every second spent on the project, and are confident in the quality of their audience and their influence.

But it is important to understand that there is a certain relationship between the number of subscribers and engagement. As a rule, the more followers, the less engagement on the account. This is due to many factors, including the fact that subscribers believe that if there are more than 30K+ likes on a post, then you don’t need them anymore.

To calculate how much a blogger should charge for advertising, taking into account engagement, follow the following scheme:

Calculate the average number of likes per post. For calculation it is recommended to take into account the last 12 posts. Output the total number of likes and divide by 12.
Determine the average number of likes by counting all the comments under the last 12 posts and dividing the number by the number of posts.
Calculate the average number of activities per post by adding the average number of likes and comments.

Next, you can determine for yourself the optimal cost for one user activity and calculate how much it will cost to place a post with you.

For example:

the average number of likes under posts is 3000;
average number of comments 75;
total activity of users under post 3075,
the selected price for one activity is $0.1.

Total: posting will cost $307.5 (3075 x 0.1).

You can automatically calculate engagement and get a lot of other useful statistical information about your profile through trendHERO.

Because comments require more effort from users, you can set separate fees for likes and comments if you wish. Remember also that brands always like to get more than they planned. Offer a discount, several posts instead of one, additional content with a product as a courtesy.

Payment by CPM

The third option is to calculate the cost of advertising by CPM. CPM (abbr. from Cost per mille) is a marketing term that shows the cost per thousand impressions or subscribers, taking into account their engagement.

To calculate your CPM payment, follow a few simple steps.

Step 1: Calculate Engagement

First of all, you need to calculate the level of engagement on your account. For this you need:

Add up the average number of likes and comments per post.
Divide the resulting value by the number of followers on the account and multiply by 100%.

Average cost of payment for 1000 impressions difference depending on the level of engagement of subscribers:

1.5-3% participation - 5 USD;
3-5% - 7 USD;
5-8% - 10 USD;
> 8% - 15 USD.

Step 2: Follower count

Next, divide the number of followers by 1000. For example, if you have 250K followers in your account, then the CPM value of the formula would be 250.

Step 3: calculation of CPM

Now all that remains is to substitute the obtained values into the formula and calculate:

Advertising price = CPM value by engagement level x per subscriber rate.

For example, let's take an account with 25K followers and engagement of 3-5%. The calculations for it will look like this:

7 USD x 25 = 175 USD per post.

Brands also often use pay per 1000 impressions. To calculate the CPM in this case, you should:

Take the average number of impressions a post gets and divide by 1000.
Multiply the resulting value by the cost per impression. The average cost is 20 USD, which formally means 2 cents per impression.

Calculation example for an account where 20000 is the average number of impressions: (20000/1000) x 20 = 20 x 20 = 400 USD.

As a rule, the engagement and impressions for Stories and regular posts are different. Therefore, for each specific ad format, you should display its own cost. Sometimes the cost of placement may be intentionally increased compared to the base rate. For example, if it takes many times more time and skills to create an advertising publication for all brand requirements than for a regular one.

Other methods

There are several other ways to determine the optimal cost of advertising in your account. The methods below do not require special calculations, but make it easy to navigate the market situation.

Use the calculator

You can use online calculators to calculate the cost of a sponsored post. It is convenient, simple and does not require much time. But you have to trust the average formula derived by professionals.

For example, the mafluence.com service allows you to calculate the cost of advertising based on the number of subscribers, their activity, engagement level, and many other factors. To make a calculation, you only need to specify a nickname.

The calculator from influencermarketinghub.com works in much the same way. With it, you can also calculate the approximate cost of advertising based on the number of subscribers, their involvement, and some other statistics by entering only the account name in the appropriate line.

Monitor competitors

You can determine the approximate cost per post by analyzing competitors. You can find out the cost of placing an advertising post directly, for example, by asking the owner of another account, or by searching for prices in chats and customer groups, on advertising exchanges.

Knowing the cost of advertising in accounts like yours, you can also create competitive offers for advertisers by offering discounts or slightly more material for the same cost.

Specify the brand's budget

Any cooperation negotiation should start with the customer's budget. Of course, you should already have your own minimum bar calculated, below which you would not cooperate. But it’s still worth considering the brand’s budget.

Knowing the brand's budget, you can act in several scenarios:

Develop an offer based on the brand's needs and budget.
Reduce the time spent on creating content and thereby reduce the cost of advertising for the brand.
Get more than originally planned if the customer's budget is more than the standard cost of placement in your account.

It may also happen that the applied brand does not have an advertising budget. Of course, unpaid work does not pay bills, but sometimes it is worth accepting such offers. Especially if you need experience and feedback.

Some brands offer barter, interesting collaborations, they are ready to provide free copies of their products in exchange for publication. And although such cooperation will be less profitable from a financial point of view, it can still be useful both for gaining experience and for establishing relationships.

In calculating the cost of advertising, everything is very individual. All influencers are at different levels, have their own strengths and weaknesses, and produce content of varying quality. The final cost of placement can be determined only by you. After all, only you know for sure how subscribers trust you, how long it takes to create high-quality content, and how real the activity in the profile is. We can only recommend staying honest with brands, keeping an eye on the quality of your audience, and looking for a compromise when necessary.

A step-by-step guide to launching advertising 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.

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.

Content:

Preparation
How Advertising works on Instagram
Register account
We connect the Business Profile
We draw up and fill the account

We launch advertising through the Instagram
Publication
Settling the Standard

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.

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.

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 out 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Click Create Promotion. The ad will go for moderation.

Promoting a story

Promoting a story works on the same principle — choose one of the published stories, indicate the site you want to lead customers to, describe the audience, set a 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.

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.

Launching 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.