Dive Brief:

• Instagram has made it easier to market on the platform, and also taken an anticipated move that that makes it more like Facebook, by allowing for business accounts.
• Even though marketers have long taken advantage of Instagram via personal accounts, Instagram has made business accounts formally available, and added some capabilities for those accounts such as targeting, measurement and reporting tools not included for individual accounts.
• An Instagram for Business blog post explains that the new business profiles are a free feature meant for users that want to be recognized as a business. "With a business profile, businesses can choose how they want their customers to get in touch with them: call, text or email with a tap of the contact button as well as get directions," the blog post reads. "Business profiles also unlock access to insights and the ability to promote."

Dive Insight:

On the advertising side, Instagram has steadily become more like its parent company, something marketers have welcomed since it allows for campaigns to be created, executed and handled across both social media audiences via a single ad platform. Opening up accounts for businesses specifically will make it easier gain insights into target audiences and boost engagement.

"We now have more than 200,000 advertisers on Instagram, the vast majority of them are small businesses. We want to help them stand out to their customers more," Marne Levine, Instagram’s chief operating officer, told Bloomberg.

Instagram described the "insights" feature business accounts will have access to as a tool that will provide "actionable information about who their followers are and which posts resonate better than others—all from within the mobile app." One goal with Instagram's business accounts is to provide brands with a more granular look at their audiences' behavior and demographics.

The other feature is “promote” which will help marketers to turn organic posts that are performing well into ads with call-to-action buttons and give them the ability to target a specific audience over a set period of time for the post to be promoted.

As Instagram's user base continues to balloon beyond the 400 million count, it will likely  continue looking for ways to bolster its ad offering so as to push growth in that area.