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How to do paid ads on instagram


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:

  1. Choose your pictures or videos (unless you’re using an existing post)
  2. Input your ad copy
  3. Select a payment option
  4. Review your ad
  5. 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.

Get the most out of your Instagram advertising budget with AdEspresso by Hootsuite. Easily create, manage, and optimize all your Instagram ad campaigns in one place. Try it free today.

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Bonus: Get the Instagram advertising cheat sheet for 2022. The free resource includes key audience insights, recommended ad types, and tips for success.

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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

  • Apply Now
  • Book Now
  • Call Now
  • Contact Us
  • Get Directions
  • Learn More
  • Get Showtimes
  • Download

#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

  • Apply Now
  • Book Now
  • Call Now
  • Contact Us
  • Download

#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

How to Run Instagram Ads: A Step-by-Step Guide

Instagram is not only one of the most popular social networks, but also an effective advertising platform.

How to get started setting up targeted ads on Instagram
  1. If you don't have a Facebook page for your business, create one.
  2. If you don't have an official Instagram account, you need to create one and link it to Facebook.
  3. Prepare images or videos to be used in advertising. nine0008

Sign in to Ads Manager and click Create.

How to properly set up Instagram ads through Facebook

1. Choose a promotion objective

Not all Facebook ad objectives are suitable for promoting on Instagram. Among the proposed options, we recommend the “Conversions” goal. In this case, you will be able to optimize ads for a certain cost per conversion.

2. Set up ads

Go to the "Ad group" tab. Choose where you want the ad to go - it's a website, app, Messenger, or WhatsApp. In the case of messengers, the user will go from the advertisement to the correspondence with your account. nine0003

Next, set up the audience.

For users who were on the site

If you already have a Facebook pixel installed on your site and it has collected enough data about visitors, you can use this information to target ads to an existing audience. To do this, click "Create" - "Custom Audience" . You can read more about remarketing on Facebook in the article on ppc.world. Other targetings can be skipped - they will only reduce the already existing “warm” base. nine0003

But this audience can be expanded thanks to a smart Facebook algorithm that selects users with similar behavior. To do this, click Similar Audience .

For new users

Geotargeting . You can select people who live in the selected place, who have recently visited it, or travelers:

Find the area itself through the search (regions, settlements) or specify using a marker. The range is also configurable. Several places can be marked. nine0003

Gender, age, languages ​​ . Everything is clear here. To set up targeting, proceed from your knowledge of the target audience of your business.

Demographics and interests . This group of targetings is called "detailed targeting" on Facebook.

Start entering the estimated interest of your target audience in the field. Facebook will immediately offer tips, and also inform you about the hypothetical size of the audience when you hover the cursor:

If you click on the button "Recommendations" , Facebook will offer you several related interests that it thinks you can add to your targetings:

If you want to target more precisely, there are two more settings:

  1. "Narrow audience" - so you add a strict condition (users have all the specified interests at the same time).
  2. "Exclude people" - this is how you remove people with a particular interest from the audience.

    In menu "Links" you can add people who have interacted with your Facebook page, app, or event invite:

    Specify placements and budget . Facebook has a large number of placements for placing your ads. In this case, we are interested in Instagram.

    In his case, he will also have to make a choice: show your ads in the social network feed, Stories, on the "Interesting" tab on Instagram, or in several places at once. Stories ads are primarily a visual impact tool. If you need to use a lot of text, opt for the Ribbon. nine0003

Below you can select the type of mobile devices on which ads will be shown. As a rule, this is useful for mobile app sellers on Android or iOS.

Set the budget (daily or for the entire duration of the campaign), as well as the start and end of the campaign, if relevant.

We recommend starting with a small budget, after the test, evaluate the results and make changes.

3.
Create ads
  • Go to the "Advertising" section on the left. nine0008
  • Specify identification data - how your company will be presented in advertising.
  • Select a format.

Please note that only Single Image or Video and Carousel options are available for Stories (images are displayed one after the other).

Carousel is good for advertising several products at the same time. "Selection" - for a spectacular and versatile presentation of one product. In many cases, however, a minimalistic solution with a single media file will work. nine0003

Select pictures and videos. Facebook provides stock images and allows you to use them in your ads. However, unique photographs - high-quality and natural, evoking emotions - are now more valued in advertising.

We recommend that you run a split test: choose several options for images, so that later you can choose the most converting one.

Next, fill in the ad with text and other data. Facebook will show you how the ad will look in the preview. nine0003

Done! If you have filled in all the required fields in the settings and deposited money into the balance, the ad will be sent for moderation.

How to set up Instagram ads: 2022 guide

Instagram* has over 1 billion active users worldwide. In Russia, at the beginning of 2022, 59 million people used Instagram, and now this figure is even higher. And along with users, new advertisers also come here: more and more beginners are looking in search engines for how to launch ads on Instagram. nine0003

In this article, you will find two step-by-step instructions for setting up ads on Instagram, with nuances and pitfalls.

And in this article we talked about how to promote Instagram after blocking.

How to switch to a business account on Instagram

First of all, you need to transfer your profile to the status of a business account, without this it is impossible to run ads.

  1. Go to the desired profile on Instagram. Go to the settings, section "Account" and at the bottom find the item "Switch to a professional account": nine0008
  2. Select the Business type and select a category.
  3. Follow the on-screen instructions to connect your professional account to your Facebook Business Page*. To do this, you must have page administrator rights.
  4. If there is no page yet, there are three options:
    • create a Page directly in the Instagram interface, specifying the basic data,
    • skip this step - to do this, select the option "Do not link to Facebook",
    • go to Facebook and create a Company Page there, and then link pages in settings:
      You can unlink a Page or link another one in the "Account" - "Linked Accounts" section.

Done , the status of the page will automatically change, and statistics will become available to you, the ability to specify contact information and, of course, advertising management directly from the application.

You can also link accounts in your Facebook business page settings. To do this, select the Instagram section in the menu on the left and enter your profile.

In addition to the ability to run ads through Ads Manager, after linking a business account to a Facebook Page, a couple more features will open:

  • Comments on Instagram posts will be stored in the Inbox menu on FB and you can reply to them. This way you won't miss user questions.
  • You can edit your Instagram profile description via FB.
  • The profile name in the advertisement will become active, users will be able to go to your account.

How to set up advertising through the Instagram interface

First, about the simple: how to launch targeted advertising using the social network itself. nine0003

Publish a post and then click the Promote button next to it.

You can also select any existing post in the Promotions section of your profile:

By the way, you can also promote Stories. To do this, open the desired story and find three dots in the lower right corner. In the list that opens, there is an item "Promote":

Or swipe up to go to the history statistics, and click on the arrow in the form of a graph.

Attention! There are restrictions on promoting stories: you won’t be able to promote old stories and those that use touch-enabled elements — polls, a timer, and so on. nine0003

Next you need to:

  • Choose a destination, which is also a target action - what the user should do after they see your ad. Options:
    • go to Instagram profile,
    • go to the site via the link (here you can choose different names for the button),
    • write a message to Direct.
  • Select an audience. The social network can automatically collect an audience, but we do not recommend doing this. For example, this is how manicure lovers from Perm see advertisements for salons from Krasnoyarsk - the audience is interested, but does not fit in geo, and the advertiser spends money. Therefore, select the item “Create your own” - indicate the places (by region or your geolocation), the interests of users and their age. Instagram itself offers options for interests, but not all of them are displayed on the screen - use the search. nine0008
  • Specify the budget and duration of the advertising campaign. Instagram advises launching a campaign for at least 3 days - during this time it promises to study your audience. You can set any budget, but the social network advises spending at least 200 rubles, otherwise the coverage will be small.

Done! Check your settings, add a payment method and click "Create Promotion".

This is how you run an Instagram ad in a couple of minutes. It will be shown in the feed and Stories of users, as well as in the "Interesting" section. But there is a catch: such targeting will not be very accurate, which means that the effectiveness of advertising will not be maximum. There are several reasons for this:

  • Audience settings are very limited - you can’t accurately select an audience by interests or those who have already interacted with you, there are restrictions on geolocation, etc. ,
  • Feed and Stories are different formats (in terms of image size and mechanics), and you can’t choose one,
  • you won't be able to test different versions of the same offer, otherwise you'll have to put them all in the feed.

Next, let's see how to run ads on Instagram through the Ad Center and Facebook Ads Manager. These methods are more difficult, but more accurate, and increase your chances of getting into the right audience. nine0003

How to run ads with Facebook Ads Manager: Simplified version of Ads Manager

If you've already migrated to the new Facebook 2021 interface, you now have Ads Center. Here everything is configured in the same way as in Ads Manager, but the interface is simpler and more compact - all settings are on one page. The main differences are that when running ads through the Ad Center, it is not possible to turn off Facebook placement, and some promotional goals and targeting options are missing. nine0003

The Ads Center is great for the first time you run ads, but you'll still need to figure out the Ads Manager interface later on. Otherwise, you simply won’t get to the main point settings like conversion optimization.

So, to get to the Advertising Center, select it in the business page settings or click + in your Facebook account and select the "Advertising" item:

You will be prompted to select the promotion goal. If you manage several pages on Fb, select the one you need in the block on the right:

  • Promote publication . Select any published post on your Facebook business page and promote it.
  • Promote a post on Instagram . The same, only you need to select a publication from a business account on Instagram:
  • Increase the number of leads . This is an ad with a lead form, we talked about it in detail in the next article.
  • Get more messages . It's an ad with a "Send Message" button that takes the user to Messenger. nine0008
  • Promote your app . Format for those whose target action is to download an app from the App Store or Google Play.
  • Promote page . Suitable if you need subscribers.
  • Promote the company locally . Advertising will be shown only within the specified radius: from 1 to 80 km. from geopoint.
  • Attract visitors to the site . The target action here is a transition to the site.

Let's look at an example of setting up a campaign through the Advertising Center using the example of driving traffic to a website.

Unlike FB Ads Manager, the first step in Ad Center is to create ad creatives. Fill in the description, title, button name, link, upload an image and check how the creative will look in all placements. To do this, click "All Previews":

Then select the audience for showing ads. If you already have audiences created, they will appear in the list. If you don't have audiences yet, create one using the "New" button or the pencil:

In the settings, you can specify not only the gender, age, and geolocation of the audience, but also demographic interests, personal interests, and purchasing behavior. Advanced audience settings are available in FB Ads Manager.

Then select the duration of the advertisement and the daily budget you are willing to spend on it.

Then go to the final block:

  • Locations . By default, the ad will be broadcast on all Facebook platforms: on the social network itself, Messenger and Instagram. You can't turn off FB promotion in the Ad Center, but you can turn off Messenger and Instagram. nine0008
  • Facebook Pixel . Be sure to install it on the site, if you haven't already done so - it will record the actions of people who went to the site from advertising. This will give you more options for optimizing your campaigns. If the pixel is installed, but you don't see it in the list, then you don't have access rights - request them from the colleague who installed the pixel on the site.
  • Payment method . Link the card with which you will pay for advertising. nine0008

And then click "Promote" and follow the results in the statistics of the Ad Center. It can be accessed from the community menu.

Now let's take a look at a full-fledged Facebook advertising account.

How to set up advertising through Facebook Ads Manager

Log in to Ads Manager using the profile linked to the company's Fb page. If you use AdBlock or other ad blockers, add Ads Manager to the exceptions, otherwise the ad cabinet functions may not work correctly. nine0003

The hierarchy in the advertising account is arranged as follows:

  • the campaign is the goal (to get coverage, subscribers, clicks, etc.),
  • ad group is targeting, i. e. the audience we want to show ads to,
  • ads - several types of advertising offers.

You can use this by spelling names so you don't get confused which campaign is responsible for what.

Example: campaign: Traffic —> group: Men 25-34 St. Petersburg —> advertisement: 30% discount. nine0003

Now start creating a new ad campaign. Facebook will ask you to select an interface - choose "Help Mode", which is what we use in the examples below.

In general, the system may look different in different articles and webinars, but the content is generally the same.

Select the goal of the advertising campaign

It all starts with the goal: what exactly do you want to get from the promotion?

We will not describe the obvious goals like "Installing the application" and "Messages", but will briefly analyze those that are not always clear to beginners. nine0003

Coverage . Suitable for image advertising, when your goal is to make sure that as many people as possible see the ad. For example, such a goal is used in event advertising.

Brand awareness . Suitable if you are launching a new brand / product on the market, and you need the target audience to remember it. Facebook knows how many times it needs to show an ad to a particular user, at what point, and in what format in order for them to remember it. Unlike reach, brand awareness does not work on the number of people, but on their “quality”. nine0003

Traffic . Use when you need to get targeted clicks to the site.

Involvement . Choose if your goal is to collect comments, likes, subscriptions and other user reactions to your posts.

Lead Generation . The application form is being promoted, which the user fills out directly on Instagram.

Conversions . Suitable if the goal is some action on the site. To do this, you need to set up event tracking using the Facebook pixel. The pixel must be created in Events Manager and installed in the site code. It captures events - user actions on the site and transfers data to the Events Manager. nine0003

You can also automatically transfer call data from the site. For this to work, you will need not only a pixel, but also a call tracking service - it is he who is responsible for calls. It is important that call tracking can be synchronized with Facebook Ads*. For example, such a function is available in Callibri MultiTracking.

MultiTracking

counts calls, requests and letters from advertising,

shows what ads customers come from,

helps optimize advertising. nine0003

Try

Attendance of outlets . Needed to attract users offline. For example, in a restaurant, shop or office of your company. Advertising is configured by geolocation - a suitable audience is selected within a certain radius from the point.

Messages . We can say that this is an analogy of the “Conversion” goal, but for those who do not have a website, and sales occur directly on Instagram. Your ads will be seen by users who are more likely to write messages in Direct. nine0003

You can send messages from Instagram Direct to Callibri MultiChat. This means that your operators will be able to respond to these messages, as well as work with requests from six social networks and instant messengers in one window, and for the client, the dialogue will still take place on Instagram.

After selecting a goal, enter a name for the campaign and ensure that Ad Budget Optimization is disabled.

Then you can set the budget and schedule manually.

Take care of billing

If this is your first ad campaign, after selecting a goal, Ads Manager will ask you to fill in information about your ad account. Specify the country for which you are going to show ads, the currency in which you will pay the bill, and the time zone - this is important for reports.

Set up the audience

Important: do not mix several target audiences in one ad group. If you want to show the same ad to different target audiences, create different groups for them. For example, if you sell subscriptions to a fitness club and you need to offer them to office workers, fit girls and girls on maternity leave, divide the groups. Otherwise, you will not be able to track which audience the post reached best and where it failed. The statistics will become unreliable. nine0003

What's in the audience settings:

For first-time ad set builders, there isn't much to build a custom audience out of yet, so we'll get back to it later.

First, fill in the basic data about your target audience.

Seats . Specify the region (or several regions) in the field to be filled in and the radius to include in it. If necessary, exclude unnecessary places, to do this, switch to the “Exclude” mode.

Be sure to include the people you need to find in these places. These can be:

  • Residents or Recent Visitors,
  • "People living here" - local residents, only those who live in the selected region,
  • "Recent Visitors" - people who have been in this region recently,
  • "Travelers" - those who have recently been in the region, but their main place of residence is more than 125 km away.

Enter age and gender.

We go down below and move on to detailed targeting.

You can specify demographic interests (education, work, marital status, etc.), interests and behaviors (life events, online activities, etc.). The "View" button will help you figure out the options - it will show you approximately what you can choose. Then enter all the necessary characteristics in the input field - after that the "Recommendations" button will become active, which will select interests close to those already indicated. nine0003

In the "Languages" block, indicate the language your audience speaks - for example, people of different nationalities live and go online in Russia, and they speak different languages.

If you click on "Show advanced options", the "Connections" block will open.

Here you can select people who interacted with you on Facebook: liked your page, attended events, rated the app, etc.

Pay attention to the "Audience size" block on the right: if the arrow is in the green zone, there is enough audience. If it is in the red zone, get rid of some conditions, otherwise the coverage will be very small. If the audience, on the contrary, is too wide, add conditions. nine0003

At the end, you will see a Save This Audience button. Click it if you want to use matched people in the future. Here we return to the custom audience.

If you save the selected audience, the next time you can select it in the "Use the saved audience" block.

You can also create a custom audience. These are people who have been on your site, bought something, visited an offline store, been in an app, or performed actions on your Instagram or Facebook accounts. nine0003

Nuances

  • To collect an audience that has visited your site, you need a Facebook pixel.
  • You need a minimum of 1,000 unique contacts to create an audience of existing customers.

Once you've created your first custom audience, you'll be able to find people similar to it using the Lookalike Audience feature. Just specify the region and the percentage of similarity (the higher the percentage, the less similar audience you will get, but there will be more of it). nine0003

Select placements (placements)

Ads Manager includes all possible placements for the Facebook ad family. Therefore, placements need to be clearly filtered. To do this, select the "Edit placements" item and uncheck all items except Instagram:

The system will automatically check the necessary checkboxes:

Landing Page. Specify Instagram Direct and placements will be determined automatically. nine0003

Only one placement can be left. To the right of the Placements list, Ads Manager displays recommended image and video sizes. You can design different images in the same ad group, but you can’t find out which worked better.

Also here, by clicking on the line "Show advanced options", you can select the types of devices to display, operating systems and specific models of smartphones and tablets. And set ads to show only if the user is connected to Wi-Fi:

Specify the budget and schedule of the impression

Select the desired ad optimization result in the "Impression group optimization" section, the options depend on the goal you selected at the beginning.

You can enter a daily budget or a lifetime budget. We advise you to choose the second option - it's easier to control the cost of an advertising campaign and you definitely won't get a surprise in the form of a multi-thousand bill because you forgot about advertising (it happens, we are all human).

In the advanced settings, you can specify a specific time for the ad to be shown to the user. For example, a coffee shop can show ads for breakfast strictly in the morning hours:

Create an ad

So, we got to the ad itself. You can select a post that's already in your feed (in the "Use an existing post" section) or create a new ad. Check that the correct Instagram account is selected.

There are three formats available for Instagram: Carousel, Single Image or Video, and Featured. nine0003

Single image

You can create up to six ads with a different image, video, or slideshow. Here you can also customize the ad for the feed or stories by selecting different images or cropping one.

Next, fill in the ad text and select a call to action (button). If you are taking people away from ads to your site, don't forget to add UTM tags to the link. So you can track the number of transitions.

nine0002 See also:

How to create UTM tags for Yandex.Direct and any other advertising

Check how your ad will look in the preview - this block is located to the right of the settings and is updated as they are filled.

Carousel

You can upload up to 10 images, videos or slideshows. At the same time, it is impossible to separately set up an ad for the feed and stories here, only one option is created. nine0003

Tips for image size, video length, resolution and more you will see when you select a media file.

In the carousel there is an important checkbox "Automatically show the highest scoring cards first". This means that the system will automatically mix the loaded cards and show the most effective cards first (based on the accumulated statistics). If the order of the cards is important to you, do not forget to uncheck this item.

In the "Call to Action" section, select the desired button, it will be shown on all cards. nine0003


Featured

This is a special ad format that allows users to view products and place an order right in the app. Clicking on an ad opens the Instant Experience canvas with a description.

Choose a template and attach a product catalog. If the catalog does not exist, create it in the Catalog Manager using the prompts. Add text and links.

Once you've finished creating your ad, click the "Confirm" button.

Add a payment method

Link a card from which money will be debited. Usually, specialists allocate a separate card or electronic wallet for this so that funds are not debited from your personal account.

Enter your TIN - Facebook needs this information because we pay VAT. And then link the card.

Done! The ad will be sent for moderation. As soon as it is approved, you will receive a notification. You can find statistics on the results of an advertising campaign on the main page of Ads Manager. nine0003

To avoid moderation issues, please read the Community Guidelines beforehand. And then - a list of prohibited materials and types of prohibited content. In general, there is nothing supernatural in these rules - do not discriminate, do not advertise alcohol, tobacco products and gambling, do not publish nudity (at the same time, using works of art in advertising is possible, but this is fraught - moderation can still reject the ad and restore reputation it will be long and painful). The main rule is don't cheat. This is especially important if you are selling a subscription to a service. nine0003

Things to remember about Instagram ads

To summarize: