How to do targeted ads on instagram

The Incredible How-To Guide with FAQ and Tips

Instagram offers incredible opportunities for businesses of all sizes to reach their target audiences.

But as more and more brands join Instagram and the feed becomes more competitive, it can be harder to stand out.

Imagine being able to reach the specific groups of Instagram users you want to connect with, engage them, and convert them into customers.

Well, that’s totally possible!

In late 2015, Instagram opened up Instagram ads. Using the Facebook advertising system, marketers can now reach any specific segment of Instagram’s 600+ million users. And with 400 million people using Instagram every day, Instagram ads have become an enticing avenue for brands looking to increase engagement (and profits, too).

We’d love to help you get started and running with Instagram ads. In this post, we’ll go through all you need to know to create your first Instagram ad, measure your ad performance, and improve your results.

Buffer for Instagram now comes with direct scheduling! Schedule single-image posts or set reminders to post videos and multi-image posts at your best times to grow your Instagram following. Learn more today.

Navigating this guide

Instagram advertising uses Facebook’s advertising system which is very comprehensive and powerful. Never before could we target people based on their age, interests, and behaviors to such specificity. There’ll be a lot to cover in this guide. To help make reading this guide easier, I have divided the guide into six short, digestible chapters.

Feel free to read it from top to bottom (thank you!) or skip to your favorite section with the quick links:

Chapter 1: An Introduction to Instagram Ads: Studies on why Instagram ads are so popular and whether Instagram ads suit your brand, and instructions for getting started.

Chapter 2: Getting started with Instagram Ads: How to choose objectives, define your target audience, place your ads in Instagram, and set your budget and schedule.

Chapter 3: The 6 Different Formats of Instagram Ads: A detailed walkthrough of each of the ad formats you can use for your Instagram Feed and Stories ads and how to create them.

Chapter 4: Creating Instagram Ads Within the Instagram App: A quick how-to guide on promoting existing Instagram posts as Instagram ads.

Chapter 5: Measuring Success: Tips and screenshots on using the Facebook Ads Manager to measure and analyze your Instagram ad performance.

Chapter 6: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and Helpful Tips: A short section to answer some questions you might have about Instagram ads.

Chapter 1:

An Introduction to Instagram Ads

Why use Instagram ads?

Since Instagram launched advertising on its platform in 2015, Instagram ads have driven more than one billion user actions. And just last year, it more than doubled its advertiser base in six months to 500,000 advertisers.

A survey by Strata in 2016 found that 63 percent of US ad agency professionals planned to use Instagram ads for their clients. This is a huge jump from the 34 percent in the year before (when Instagram ads were not yet available to everyone), making Instagram ads one of the most popular social media advertising choice.

(Image from eMarketer)

5 reasons to use Instagram Ads

Why are Instagram ads so popular? Here are a few reasons:

1. Audience growth: Instagram is one of the fastest growing social media platforms. TrackMaven studied 26,965 brands across all industries and found that brands saw a 100 percent median follower growth from 2015 to 2016.

2. Attention: Users spend, on average, 50 minutes a day on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. In the U.S., one in five minutes spent on mobile is spent on Instagram or Facebook.

3. Intent: A study by Instagram found that 60 percent of Instagram users say that they learn about products and services through Instagram, and 75 percent say that they take actions such as visiting sites, searching, or telling a friend after seeing an Instagram post.

4. Targeting: Instagram ads uses Facebook’s advertising system, which has probably the most powerful targeting ability. You can specify your target audience’s location, demographics, interests, behaviors, and more. You can even target people who have bought from you or interacted with you and others like them.

5. Results: According to Instagram, which looked at more than 400 campaigns globally, ad recall from Instagram ads was 2.8 times higher than Nielsen’s norms for online advertising.

Should you consider Instagram ads?

So, should you be using Instagram ads? Likely, yes!

Instagram ads are incredibly powerful, but before you dive in, there are several factors to consider:

1. Demographics — Is your target audience on Instagram? According to Statistic, as of December 2015, the largest U.S. Instagram user group were between 18 to 34 years old (26%), followed by 18 to 24 years old (23%). Pew Research Center found that in the U. S., female (38%) are more likely to use Instagram than male (26%). While the study was only conducted on Americans, I believe similar patterns exist globally.

For more details on Instagram demographics, check out our Instagram marketing guide.

2. Topics — Do your target audience talk about your industry/product/service on Instagram? Facebook surveyed 11,000 young adults (13 to 24) across 13 markets and discovered that some of the most popular topics on Instagram are:

• fashion/beauty
• food
• TV/films
• hobbies
• music

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but before diving into Instagram ads, I’d recommend doing some research on the topics your target audience engage with the most on Instagram.

3. Visual storytelling — Can you create visual content that blends into your target audience’s Instagram feed? According to the same Facebook study above, “Instagrammers appreciate aesthetic quality in visual content”. Instagram is a visual-first platform, where visual content, rather than text, is the primarily form of communication.

If you have a presence on Instagram already, it’s likely that you would have ticked all the checkboxes and Instagram ads are suitable for you. Otherwise, it might be great to start testing the water on Instagram without using any ad spend.

Tip: If you are just starting your Instagram account or wanting to refine your Instagram marketing strategy, check out our complete guide to Instagram marketing.

Chapter 2:

Getting started with Instagram ads

Instagram made it so easy to create Instagram ads. In fact, there are five different ways you can create and manage your Instagram ads:

• Within the Instagram app
• Facebook Ads Manager
• Power Editor
• Facebook’s Marketing API
• Instagram Partners

In this post, we’ll cover the first two (creating ads via the Instagram app and Facebook Ads Manager). These are the simplest two among the five and feel like the destinations where the vast majority of businesses will create Instagram ads.

The Power Editor and Facebook’s Marketing API are for people who want to create a huge quantity of Instagram ads at once while Instagram Partners are experts who can help with buying and managing ads at scale, engaging with your community, and creating Instagram content for you.

Creating Instagram ads using Facebook Ads Manager

Because the Facebook’s advertising system is so comprehensive, there are several steps we have to go through to create Instagram ads. They are quite straightforward, and we’ll go through each of them below. Here are the general steps:

• Choose a marketing objective
• Name your ad campaign
• (Some marketing objectives require additional steps here, which we’ll go through below.)
• Define your audience, placements, budget, and schedule
• Create the ad itself or use an existing post

Tip: While there isn’t a fixed naming rule, you’d want to use a naming convention such that you (and your team) can differentiate between them by the name. For example, here’s the naming convention that HubSpot uses:

Company Department | Content/Offer/Asset Being Advertised | Date | Name of Creator

Navigating to the Facebook Ads Manager

This method tends to be the way most marketers create Instagram ads.

Using Facebook Ads Manager tends to be easier than creating ads within the Instagram app, and you can do much more through the Facebook Ads Manager, too.

Editor’s note: We’ll go through creating Instagram ads within the Instagram app further below. If you wish to learn about it now, feel free to skip to that section.

Creating Instagram ads is very similar to creating Facebook ads. Just like Facebook ads, Facebook Ads Manager is the go-to place for creating, editing, and managing Instagram ads.

To access your Facebook Ads Manager, click on the drop-down arrow in the upper-right corner of any Facebook page and select “Manage Ads” from the dropdown.

Alternatively, you can use this direct link: https://www. facebook.com/ads/manager/ to go to your Facebook Ads Manager.

Once you are there, simply click the prominent, green button “Create Ad” in the upper-right corner to get started.

(If you have multiple ad accounts, you might have to select your preferred ad account for your Instagram ads first.)

Tip: To create Instagram ads using the Facebook Ads Manager, you only need to have a Facebook Page. You don’t even need an Instagram account!

The 8 Different Objectives of Instagram Ads

While Facebook offers 11 objectives in the Facebook Ads Manager, only the following eight will allow you to create Instagram ads.

1. Brand awareness
2. Reach
3. Traffic
4. App installs
5. Engagement
6. Video views
7. Lead generation
8. Conversions

Some of these objectives are super straightforward — you just choose the objective and create your ad right away. Others, however, may require a couple more steps before you can set your ad live. Here’s a quick rundown of each of the objectives (and how you set them up using Facebook Ads Manager):

1. Brand awareness

With this objective, you can help increase awareness for your brand. Your Instagram ads will be shown to people who are more likely to be interested in it.

There are no additional steps required for this objective.

2. Reach

With this objective, you can maximize how many people see your Instagram ads and how often. Unlike the brand awareness objective, the people who will see these ads might not all be interested in them.

Additional step:

After choosing this objective and naming your ad campaign, you’ll need to choose a Facebook Page to be associated with this ad campaign.

If you do not have an Instagram account, this Facebook Page will represent your business in your Instagram ads. If you have an Instagram account and prefer to use it, there’ll be an option to connect your Instagram account when you are creating the ad itself.

Tip: To create Instagram Stories ads, you can only use the Reach objective at the moment.

3. Traffic

With this objective, you can send people to your website or to the app store for your app from your Instagram ads.

Additional step:

After choosing this objective and naming your ad campaign, you’ll need to choose where you want to drive the traffic. You can choose either:

• Website or Messenger, or
• App (mobile or desktop app)

You’ll get to enter the destination URL when you are creating the ad itself.

4. Engagement

With this objective, you can get more people to see and engage with your post.

For this objective, you can choose the type of engagement you want such as post engagement, page likes, event responses, and offer claims. For advertising on Instagram, you can only choose “Post engagement”.

If you want to promote an existing post, this will be the objective to go for. But note that you can only promote an existing Facebook Page post. To promote an existing Instagram post, you’ll need to do it within the Instagram app. Click here to skip to the section.

5. App installs

With this objective, you can send people to the app store where they can download your app.

For this objective, there is a bonus feature — split testing (or A/B testing). This feature allows you to easily test different versions of your ads to find out what works best so you can improve your future ads.

Additional step:

After choosing this objective and naming your ad campaign, you’ll need to choose the app you want to promote and the app store you prefer (iTunes or Google Play for mobile apps or Facebook Canvas for desktop apps).

You can only promote one platform at a time. If you want to promote multiple platforms, you’ll need to re-create the same ad but select another platform.

6. Video views

With this objective, you can promote a video to more people. This objective is very straightforward, and there are no additional steps required for this objective.

7. Lead Generation

With this objective, you can create lead generation Instagram ads to collect relevant information from potential leads.

Additional step:

After choosing this objective and naming your ad campaign, you’ll need to choose a Facebook Page to be associated with this ad campaign. If you do not have an Instagram account, this Facebook Page will represent your business in your Instagram ads.

Note:

• Lead ads on Facebook and Instagram have several differences:
  • Not all pre-filled fields are supported on Instagram. Instagram currently support only these fields: Email, Full name, Phone number, and Gender.
  • The ads look different. To complete your Instagram lead ads, people will need to open the ad and click through a few pages to fill up their particulars. On Facebook, people only have to scroll down and not click through.
• For your lead ads to appear on Instagram, your ads have to follow Instagram’s design requirements for lead ads.
• When you are creating the ad itself, you’ll need to create a lead form. Click here to jump to the section on creating lead forms.

8. Conversions

With this objective, you can drive people to take actions on your website or app. Similar to the app installs objective, you can do split testing of your ads with this objective.

Additional step:

After choosing this objective and naming your ad campaign, you’ll need to choose the website or app you want to promote and a Facebook pixel or app event to help track the conversions.

If you haven’t set up a Facebook pixel or app event, there are instructions at that stage to help you.

Choose the audience, placement, and budget in 3 steps

1. Define the audience for your ads

Facebook advertising (and by extension, Instagram advertising) is so powerful because of the ability to target a very specific set of people. You can create a precise target audience by combining factors like:

• Location — You can enter global regions, countries, states, cities, postal codes, or addresses to show or exclude your ads to people in those locations.
• Age — You can select a range of age, with the widest range being 13 to 65+.
• Gender — You can choose to show your ads to all gender, men, or women.
• Languages — You can leave this blank unless your target audience uses a language that is uncommon in the locations selected.
• Demographics — You can target or exclude people based on their education, employment, household and lifestyle details.
• Interests — You can target or exclude people based on their interests, their activities on Facebook, the Pages they liked, and related topics.
• Behaviors — You can target or exclude people based on their purchasing behavior or intent, device usage, travel behavior, activities, and more.
• Connections — You can target people who have connections with your Page, app, or event.

Wow! And that’s not all…

You can also target people who have a relationship with your business such as customers or people who have interacted with your app or content (using “Custom Audience”). You can even target other people like them (using “Lookalike Audience”).

Once you have chosen your criteria, Facebook Ads Manager will show you information about your selected audience on the right. This breakdown includes information such as:

• How specific or broad your selected audience is
• Your targeting criteria
• Potential reach
• Estimated daily reach

Tip: This is a very brief rundown of the audience targeting options. For a more detailed explanation of each targeting option, feel free to read

2. Choose the placement of your ads

This is an important step if you want your ads to appear in only Instagram and not Facebook. Facebook Ads Manager tends to select both Facebook and Instagram placements by default. If you only want Instagram ads,

• Select “Edit Placements”
• Deselect “Facebook” (and for some objectives, “Audience Network”) under Platforms

If you want to create Instagram Stories ads, click on the arrow to the left of “Instagram” and select Stories from the drop-down:

If you prefer, you can use the advanced options to specify which mobile devices and operating systems (Android or iOS) you want your ads to appear. This is helpful if you are promoting a mobile app. For example, if you want to promote your iOS app, you might want to select “iOS Devices only”.

3. Set your budget and schedule

The next, and the final step before you create your Instagram ad itself, is to set how much you want to spend on your Instagram ads and how long you want to run the ads.

For your budget, you can set a daily or lifetime budget. The daily budget is the average amount you’ll spend on your ads every day. The lifetime budget is the total amount you’ll spend over the lifetime of your ads.

For your schedule, you can let your ads run continuously (until you hit your lifetime budget or you pause them) or set a start and end date and time.

There are also advanced options for you to tweak your budget and schedule. If you are just starting out, you can ignore those options as Facebook sets them according to its recommendations by default.

Instagram Ads work on the same system as Facebook Ads. Costs depends on a few factors including your budget and whether you select Manual or Automatic bidding. Instagram Ad will never cost you more than you have to spend, though. If you have a budget of $15 per day, Instagram Ads will never cost you more than $15 a day.

Further reading: For more context on the cost of ads, check out: The Complete Guide to Facebook Ads Pricing

Chapter 3:

The 6 Different Formats of Instagram Ads

Now, with your budget, audience, and placements set, you are ready to create your ad.

For Instagram ads, there are six formats you can choose from — four for Instagram Feed ads and two for Instagram Stories ads.

Here are the four for Instagram Feed ads (we’ll cover Instagram Stories ads below):

• Carousel (multiple scrollable images or videos)
• Single Image
• Single Video
• Slideshow
• Canvas (This format is not supported on Instagram at the moment. )

Tip: All the recommended image and video specifications are listed in the Facebook Ads Manager by the section where you would upload your media files.

1. Carousel

Carousel ads are ads with two or more scrollable images or videos.

If you haven’t connected your Instagram account, here’s where you can connect it.

Next, fill up the text field with the caption you want for your Instagram ads. This caption will remain the same even when a person scrolls through your carousel ad.

The next step is to create the cards of your carousel ad. You can create up to 10 cards in a single ad. For each card,

• Upload an image, video, or slideshow (The specifications are all provided there.)
• Fill in the headline (This text will form the first line of your caption and will change as a person scrolls through your carousel ad. See the example above.)
• Leave the description blank (I believe this is for Facebook carousel ads.)
• Fill in the destination URL (This is the URL behind your call-to-action button).

There are also some settings for the entire carousel ad.

• Ignore the See More URL and See More Display URL fields (They are for Facebook carousel ads which have an end card.)
• Select the most appropriate call-to-action button (This will be the same for every card of the carousel ad.)

Tip: Facebook has a great resource and FAQ site for carousel ads. There are examples, best practices guides, design recommendations, and more.

2. Single Image

Single Image ads are what they say they are — ads with a single image. If you choose this format, you can create up to six ads with one image each.

Single image ads are much easier to create than carousel ads. The first thing to do is to select the image(s) for your ad. You can choose from your previous uploads (i.e. Image Library), select free stock images, or upload new images.

Then, the main field to fill up is the text field (i.e. your caption for the ad). The caption may include up to 300 characters but note that characters after the third line will be truncated into an ellipsis (“…”). Facebook recommends using 125 characters.

If you want to drive traffic to your site, select “Add a website URL” and more options will appear. All you have to do is to fill in your website URL and select a call-to-action button. The remaining fields (Display Link, Headline, and News Feed Link Description) won’t be used for Instagram ads.

3. Single Video

Single video ads are ads with a video or a GIF.

After you select this ad format, select a video from your library or upload a new video. Then, you can choose a video thumbnail from the list provided or upload a custom thumbnail. You can also upload a SRT file for the video captions.

Then, fill up the text field with your caption. Similar to single image ads, the caption may include up to 300 characters but note that characters after the third line will be truncated into an ellipsis (“…”). Facebook recommends using 125 characters.

If you want to drive traffic to your site, select “Add a website URL” and more options will appear. All you have to do is to fill in your website URL and select a call-to-action button. The remaining fields (Display Link, Headline, and News Feed Link Description) won’t be used for Instagram ads.

4. Slideshow

Slideshow ads are looping video ads with up to 10 images and music. It’s almost like a carousel ad that scrolls on its own — with music.

You can upload an existing slideshow or create a new slideshow. Facebook Ads Manager has an easy-to-use slideshow creator. Simply upload your images, arrange them to your liking, adjust the settings, and select a music.

Just like a video ad, you can also choose a thumbnail and upload video captions.

Then, fill up your caption and add a website URL if you prefer. This part is the same as the single image and single video ads.

Tip: If you have an existing Facebook Page post that performed well and you’d like to use it for your Instagram ad, you can select “Use Existing Post” at the top of the page. Note that this option only allows you to choose from existing Facebook Page posts. If you want to use an existing Instagram post, see the Chapter 4.

If you are creating lead ads (i.e. using the lead generation objective), there is an additional step, regardless of the ad format you choose. That is to create your lead form. You can use a previous lead form you have created or create a new one.

To create a new lead form, there are several fields to fill in:

• Welcome screen (You can turn this off, and the form will appear first.)
  • Headline
  • Image
  • Layout (Description)
  • Button text
• Questions (You can pick from a list of options or create custom questions.)
• Privacy policy (As you will be collecting user information, you need to include your company’s privacy policy)
• Thank you screen
  • A website link which people can visit after filling up the form

Once you have filled in these fields, click “Finish” and your lead form is ready!

Tip: Once you hit “Finish”, you won’t be able to edit the lead form.  You can use the “Save” button to save a draft of the lead form if you wish to edit it afterward.

Instagram just opened up Instagram Stories ads to businesses globally. If you don’t see this option in your Facebook Ads Manager, it might be that it hasn’t been rolled out to your country yet.

Instagram Stories ads appear in between people’s stories. Here are the two Instagram Stories ad formats:

• Single image
• Single video

Tip: To create Instagram Stories ads, you’ll have to choose the Reach objective and select “Stories” under the Placement section.

5. Single Image

With this format, you can create up to six ads with one unique image each. It looks just like a normal Instagram story with a tiny “Sponsored” at the bottom.

There isn’t much customization you can do with Instagram Stories ads, making them very straightforward and simple to create. All you have to do is to upload your image(s).

If you wish to enable pixel or offline tracking, you can find the options under “Show Advanced Options”.

6. Single Video

With this format, you can upload a video or GIF of up to 15 seconds in length.

Simply upload your video or GIF and choose a video thumbnail. The thumbnail you choose will be what people see before your video plays. It can influence people’s decision to watch your ad.

If you wish to enable pixel or offline tracking, you can find the options under “Show Advanced Options”.

Chapter 4:

Creating Instagram Ads Within the Instagram App

The alternative to creating Instagram ads with the Facebook Ads Manager is to use the Instagram app. The Instagram app allows you to promote an existing Instagram post, and I believe this is the only way to do that.

There are a few requirements to meet before you can promote directly from the app:

• You need to convert to a Business Profile on Instagram. (Here’s how!)
• You need to be an Admin of the Facebook Page connected to the Instagram account. (If you want to be added as an Admin, here’s how.)
• You need to follow Facebook’s Advertising Policies.

Once you are set up, here’s a quick run-through of the process in three simple steps:

1. Select the post you want to promote

Find the post you’d like to promote and click on the blue “Promote” button. You may be prompted to log in to your Facebook account.

Unlike in the Facebook Ads Manager, there are only two objectives to choose from:

• Visit your Website
• Call or visit your business

3. Set your action button, audience, budget, and duration

Depending on your ad objective, you will have different action buttons to choose from. After you choose an action button, you can enter your preferred URL, address, or phone number.

Just like in the Facebook Ads Manager, you will set who you want to target, how much you want to spend, and how long you want to run the ad.

For your audience, you can target by locations, interests, age, and gender.

For your budget, you determine the total budget for the ad. Unlike in the Facebook Ads Manager, you can’t choose a daily or lifetime budget or change any advanced options.

For your ad duration, you enter the number of days you want to run the ad. The ad starts immediately.

Once you are ready, you can review your order, preview the ad, and promote it.

Chapter 5:

Measuring Success

Like Facebook ads, the performance data of your Instagram ads will be available in your Facebook Ads Manager.

The Facebook Ads Manager reporting table might look intimidating at first glance but don’t let that scare you. Think of it as a spreadsheet of all your ads and their performance metrics — and it’s easier to use.

The reporting table is quite easy to use once you get a sense of what can it do. To get you started, here are some of the things you can do with the reporting table:

The first thing you might want to do is see all the ads you and your team have created to understand the big picture.

Facebook (and Instagram) ads follow a simple three-tier structure: Ad campaigns > Ad sets > Ads.

(Image via Digital Vidya)

Ad campaign is the highest tier of the structure, where you decide your marketing objective for the campaign. Within each ad campaign, there is one or several ad sets.

Ad set is the second tier of the structure, where you set your audience targeting, placement, budgets, and schedule. Within each ad set, there is one or several ads.

Ad is the final tier of the structure and the “final product” that people see on Facebook.

Facebook Ads Manager has a folder-like navigation that lets you toggle between your ad campaigns, ad sets, and ads. This way, you can quickly compare how various ad campaigns, ad sets, or ads are doing.

Tip: If you want to find a specific ad campaign, ad set, or ad, you can also use the search bar at the top of the page.

Analyze the performance metrics of your Instagram ads

Just like a spreadsheet, the reporting table allows you to see the performance of your Instagram ads at a glance. You will be able to see metrics such as the results obtained by the ads, the cost of the ads, and the amount spent.

If you do not see the metrics you are interested in, you can change the columns by clicking on “Columns: Performance” and then “Customize Columns…”. A popup will appear, and you can select the metrics you want or deselect those you don’t want.

Once you have the metrics (or columns) you want, you can sort the data by clicking on the heading of a column or export the data using the export button on the right.

Finally, if you want to drill down into each ad campaign, ad set, or ad to see more detailed metrics and charts, simply click on its name. This is an example of what you’ll see:

Tip: If you want to dive deeper into Facebook Ads Manager to manage and analyze your ads, here’s our one-stop guide to the Facebook Ads Manager.

Chapter 6:

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and Helpful Tips

FAQs

Can I create Instagram ads without a Facebook Page?

It seems like a Facebook Page is required if you want to run Instagram ads. If you don’t have a Facebook Page, another option is to run Facebook ads (with some limitations).

Can I create Instagram ads without an Instagram account?

Yes, you can! All you need is a Facebook Page. If you don’t connect an Instagram account, here are a few things to be mindful of:

• Your Facebook Page’s name and profile photo will be used on your Instagram ads to let people know the ads are from your business.
• You can’t reply to comments on your Instagram ads.
• Your Facebook Page’s name will be used as your Instagram handle, which won’t be clickable. If your Facebook Page’s name is more than 30 characters, it’ll be truncated with an ellipsis (“…”).

Where will my Instagram ads appear? Can they be seen on a desktop computer?

Instagram ads will only appear in the Instagram app on iOS and Android devices. They will not be shown to people who are browsing Instagram on a desktop computer or other mobile sites. If you want people to see your ads on a desktop computer, Facebook ads might be a better option.

Should I run my ads on both Facebook and Instagram?

Facebook’s recommendation is yes. When you run ads on both platforms, Facebook will optimize your ad placement to achieve the most results with the lowest cost. Facebook Marketing Science did a study and found this to be true. Smartly.io’s experience with Facebook and Instagram ads confirmed this, too.

Having said that, it might be worth considering if your Facebook and Instagram strategies are aligned and if your Facebook ad might look out of place on Instagram and vice versa. For instance, as our Instagram account focuses on user-generated content, an ad for Facebook about video marketing tips will likely look odd on people’s Instagram feed.

Are there any guidelines for Instagram ads?

Yes! Facebook has an incredible resource about every type of ad for every marketing objective. In there, it previews an sample ad and lists the design recommendation, technical requirements, and call-to-action information for every single type of ad.

3 Helpful Tips for Creating Instagram Ads

Creating ads (and paying for them) for the first time definitely doesn’t feel easy. As I’d love to help you succeed with your Instagram ads, I curated several helpful tips on creating great Instagram ads. Feel free to explore the articles below to read more Instagram ads tips.

Blend in, don’t stick out

(from Doug Baltman, Instagram Advertising in 2017: What You Need to Know)

Doug Baltman’s advice is to use photos that blend in with other photos on your target audience Instagram feed. Otherwise, your ad will stick out as inorganic content and be less effective. This is the same advice given by Facebook. This could mean to use photos of people or your product instead of illustrations or…

A general rule is to try to avoid putting words on top of images…

As most Instagram posts do not have text on the photos, any photos with text on them will feel out of place. Instagram users might detect that it’s an ad immediately and quickly scroll past it.

Tip: The more text you have on your ad, the less reach it’d receive (apart from a few exceptions). Here’s Facebook’s guide for using text in ad images.

Leverage user-generated content (with permission)

(from Pawel Grabowski, 26 Instagram Ad Best Practices That Will Make You an Outstanding Marketer)

In his article for AdEspresso, Pawel Grabowski shared 20 best practices for Instagram ads. Among the 20, the advice on using user-generated content stood out for me.

User-generated content is more genuine and helps potential customer gain trust in you. Pawel quoted a report by Nielsen which stated that “92 percent of consumers around the world say they trust earned media, such as recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising.”

Using photos from your customers in your ad design (with permission) makes your Instagram ads more effective and helps your ads blend in, too.

Use targeting to connect with a local audience

(from Ana Gotter, 26 Instagram Ad Best Practices That Will Make You an Outstanding Marketer)

This is a great advice for local brick-and-mortar businesses. Facebook’s advertising system allows you to target very specific locations while Instagram’s business profile features allow customers to contact you or get direction to your business.

Imagine being a local restaurant which shows an ad featuring their most mouth-watering dish to a user within a close proximity, just in time for dinner, and that user immediately sees a map and directions to you. All it takes is a click to your profile, and you can get both a new customer and a new follower at the same time.

Over to you

Wow, that was a long guide. Thanks for making it all the way to the end!

I’d love to hear about your experiences with Instagram ads. If you have run Instagram ads before, what was your strategy, and how did they perform? If not, is there anything that is giving you a pause with Instagram ads?

Just like Facebook ads, I believe Instagram ads will constantly evolve and improve, allowing us to create even better ads. A good case in point: in the process of writing this guide, Instagram introduced lead gen ads and Instagram Stories ads.

If you have not looked into Instagram ads, I think it’ll be worth checking it out for your business.

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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

Targeted ads on Instagram*.

How to set up

Tips

Set up via mobile app and Facebook account* Ads Manager

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Among the "white hat" methods of promotion, targeted advertising on Instagram occupies a priority place. This is because it is customized for a specific audience and allows you to show the creative only to the selected segment. This gives marketers and entrepreneurs ample opportunities to solve business problems:

To	How to use
Coffee house, food court, stationery store	Invite visitors to the nearby office center
Online store for children's goods, sports equipment	Sell goods to regions where delivery is available
Software manufacturer, recruitment agency, security services	Engage business owners with IT interests

In this article I will tell you what are the ways to set up targeted ads on Instagram and what is important to consider when launching.

Two ways to start targeting on Instagram*

Set up ads through your Instagram profile*

Set up Instagram* ads through your Facebook account*

Features of Instagram ads*

Two ways to start targeting on Instagram*

two ways to set up advertising:

Method	When to use
Through the profile in the mobile application of the social network	- advertising needs to be launched quickly; - fine targeting settings are not needed; - Want to use a published post or stories instead of creating a new creative.
Via Facebook* Ads Manager from computer	- you need to launch several ads for different audiences or even one creative for different segments; - you want to use deep audience settings by interests; - you need to analyze the effectiveness of advertising before applications and even sales; - you want to connect users to ad settings with different access levels.

Usually they combine both methods at the same time or set up advertising only through the cabinet. The first scenario solves two tasks of a marketer:

• posts are “overgrown” with likes, which managers really like;
• increase traffic to a website, app or profile on Instagram* and at the same time set up impressions for any audience of the social network.

When setting up advertising through the account, the marketer gets more opportunities for setting up, analyzing and testing hypotheses. Including, you can create a campaign to increase the hearts under the posts.

Below I will tell about each of the methods and pitfalls in more detail.

Setting up advertising through the Instagram profile*

Through the mobile application, the promotion of the post is launched in a few steps.

1. Make sure the Instagram* profile is switched to a business account

Go to "Settings", then "Account" and select "Switch to professional profile".

Step 1, 2 and 3 to switch to a business profile

Next, select "Business", a category of goods or services. After confirmation, the system will request contact details to be displayed in the profile: phone, email, postal address. In the profile settings, the entered data can always be changed.

If the profile has already been switched to a business account, the status "Switch to personal account" will be displayed in the settings:

When switching to a business account, statistics, the ability to contact the company using the specified contacts (phone, email or website) and setting up advertising from the application will become available.

Instagram* immediately offers to link the profile to the corresponding Facebook page*. You can skip this item for a while, but in the future I recommend linking it to:

• Manage Instagram comments via Facebook *. It is more convenient to store, monitor and respond from a computer.
• Edit Instagram profile via Facebook*. Description and contacts will be available for editing.
• Users were able to navigate to a Facebook* page from an ad. When clicking on the name of the company in the post, the client will be taken to the corresponding page and will be sure of the reliability of the advertisement.

If the account does not have a Facebook* page, there are two options: create it in the Instagram interface (the system will prompt you to enter basic data) or create a Facebook page. You can link both social networks in any of the accounts.

2. Select a post or stories to promote

You can advertise any published post or stories at the time of its validity. It will not be possible to promote archival publications and old stories. To access your ad settings, select a post and click on Promote next to it. If it's a story, select the appropriate item from the stories menu.

The Promote button is only available in a business account. If it is not there, go back one step of instructions

The promotions section is available from the profile at any time. Here you can manage running ads, monitor statistics and results.

From the "Promotions" menu, you can select a post for advertising and edit a running ad.

3. Define settings for displaying ads

Three settings can be selected in the mobile application interface.

Destination. Where the user will go if he clicks on the button below the post. There are three options to choose from: a website, an Instagram* profile, and a direct message.

Advertising audience. To whom the post or story will be shown. There are two settings to choose from:

- An audience similar to the profiles of account subscribers. I do not recommend using it if you have a local business or have untargeted (cheated) subscribers.

- Own audience. Based on the age, geography, and interests of users, select the preferred segment for displaying ads.

Custom audience can be created once and reused to promote other posts

Budget and duration of advertising. The social network will recommend the daily budget and posting period. During this time, Instagram* will study the audience and reach the optimal number of viewers. Choose your preferred settings by which the social network will predict reach.

At the last step, check the selected settings and ad preview. You can't choose a display location in the Instagram* interface: the system automatically launches the promotion in the feed, in stories, and in the "Recommended" section.

Go to the ad preview and see how the selected post appears in the feed and stories

You can create an Instagram promotion* after linking the card for payment. Please note that funds will be debited after the end of the campaign. For some time (up to 24 hours) advertising will be moderated. Once launched, in the Promotions menu, you can view ad statistics, edit settings, or stop impressions at any time.

To customize your ads more accurately and efficiently, use the Facebook* Ads Manager dashboard tools.

Setting up Instagram* ads via Facebook*

Instagram* ads via Facebook* Ads Manager offers extensive settings: selection of the promotion target, display locations, audience and creative. In addition to the published feed posts or stories, you can upload your own ads and target different audiences at the same time.

I will analyze three successive steps for setting up advertising through the back office:

Instagram* placement is selected at the third step, but without the previous steps it will not be possible to launch advertising.

1. Go to your Facebook business profile*

A business profile is required for professional ad management. With it you can:

• Provide different levels of access to the advertising account. For example, a manager for viewing only, a marketer and a targetologist for editing.
• Create Facebook* pixels to remember users who visited the site and transfer them to the advertising account.
• Create and manage multiple ad accounts. Useful for freelancers and agencies managing multiple projects at the same time.

To create a business profile, go to Business Manager with an account that has a Facebook page*. If the page does not exist, go back to the "Instagram* profile ad settings" step and link your Facebook* account to your Instagram profile.

Click the Create Company button and follow the system instructions. After filling in the fields, you must confirm the actions by e-mail (a notification will be sent). After that, the account is ready to go.

The process of registering a business account will take no more than 5 minutes

In the account settings, you can add users to manage ads, share settings and audience pixels. First of all, you need to create an advertising account.

2. Create an advertising account

In the "Accounts" menu, select "Ad Accounts":

— if you already have an advertising account, add it to the new account;

- if there is no account, create a new one using the link;

- if the account belongs to another user, request access to it (done to determine the agreements between the agency and the client or between two users).

To create a new ad account, enter the name, time zone, and currency of the charge. After filling in the fields, the system will offer to add a payment method - this is necessary to launch advertising campaigns.

3. Set up ads in Ads Manager

You can access Instagram* ads via Facebook* from your business account or from the manager menu using the Ads Manager quick link.

You are now ready to start creating Instagram ads*. For convenience, the office provides a hierarchy:

- Campaign or ad target. That is, the result that you want to achieve with the help of advertising. It can be recognition, viewing and conversions.

The purpose of advertising is selected depending on the tasks and the offer that is presented to users. The choice of Instagram placement* is available for any purpose.

- Ad group or targeting. To whom and where we show ads. At this stage, the placement of Instagram* is selected.

There are several settings in the Ad Group section. Depending on their choice and combination, the potential reach of advertising will change.

There are many nuances in the settings of the audience through the Facebook advertising account* that are not available when advertising through the mobile application. For example:

• setting impressions for an audience that was already on your website or Instagram profile *;
• setting up impressions for existing customers based on email and mobile phones.

Another setting that is not available when running ads through the mobile application interface is the choice of display location. This can be not only Instagram* and its placements, but also Facebook* and third party partner apps.

The final stage of the ad group is the selection of the budget and duration of the ad. Here you can specify start and end dates for the campaign, set a daily or lifetime budget, and even limit the cap per action (a click, for example).

- Ads or promotional offers. What do we show the audience.

Ad selection has three options for displaying ads on Instagram*: single image or video feed, carousel, and collection. Each of them has its own requirements for uploaded files and text. Also at this step, you can select an existing publication and promote it.

After filling in the fields and uploading materials, ads will be sent for moderation. It usually takes 2-4 hours. If you have any doubts about advertising products or services on Instagram*, please refer to the official advertising policies and guidelines for using the social network.

The names of campaigns, groups and ads themselves are written in such a way that the hierarchy of settings is clear.

Change the default name for viewing ads in reports, statistics, tips, and notifications:

For example,

• Traffic → Instagram*: men, 25-34, Peter → 25% discount.
• Conversions → Instagram*: women, 18-23, M + SPb → October promotion.

Features of advertising on Instagram*

In order for advertising on Instagram* to be effective, it is better to entrust it to professional specialists or an agency. I recommend paying attention to the following social network features for business advertising:

• A more accurate audience is configured through the Facebook* advertising account, the Instagram* interface is not suitable for experiments and testing hypotheses.
• Separating ad placements will have a beneficial effect on efficiency: use different formats and create multiple campaigns for social network placements.
• Dividing impression audiences into ad groups is also necessary for finer tuning, analysis, and campaign performance.
• In ads, you can exclude audiences from impressions. For example, choose those who are definitely not the target audience or have already interacted with the company, and not show ads to them.
• The ability to track the effectiveness of each creative, audience through web analytics systems and utm-tags in ads.
• Ability to test creatives, audiences, and placements to determine effective advertising channels.

Pay close attention to the Advertising Rules on the site, your account can be blocked for life for violation.

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How to set up Instagram ads: 2022 guide

Instagram* has over 1 billion active users worldwide. In Russia, at the beginning of 2022, 59 people used Instagrammillion people, 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.

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

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 advertising.

1. Go to the desired Instagram profile. Go to the settings, section "Account" and at the bottom find the item "Switch to a professional account":
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 the pages in the settings:
     You can unlink a Page or link another one in the "Account" - "Linked Accounts" section.

Done , the page status 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 functions will open: This way you won't miss user questions.

You can edit your profile description on Instagram via FB.

The profile name in the ad will become active, users will be able to go to your account.

How to set up advertising through the Instagram interface

First, let's talk about simple things: how to launch targeted advertising using the social network itself.

Publish your 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 the promotion of stories: it will not be possible to promote old stories and those that use touch-enabled elements - polls, a timer, and so on.

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.
• 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), but 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.

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.

The Ad 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 "Advertising":

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.
• 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 that 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.
• 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.

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.

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.

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 app" and "Messaging", but will briefly analyze those that are not always clear to beginners.

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”.

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.

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 which ads customers come from,

helps optimize advertising.

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.

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.

What's in the audience settings:

For first-time ad set builders, there's nothing 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,
• "Travellers" - those who have recently been in this 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 from. 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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Things to remember about Instagram ads

To summarize:

• Setting up ads in the Instagram interface severely limits your targeting options. If you want to find your audience more accurately and get more impact from your ads, set them up through Facebook Ads Manager.

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