Dive Brief:
- Instagram is doubling the length of video ads to 30 seconds, and ads have gone global and available in countries such as India, Mexico and South Korea.
- The social photo-sharing platform also introduced a new premium product, Marquee, that gives brands mass awareness and expanded reach for a limited time designed for special events such as movie premieres or product launches.
- Instagram’s parent company, Facebook, also announced news that should please marketers with its first overhaul of Facebook Pages since 2012.
Dive Insight:
Soon after announcing vertical video and widescreen images that get away from Instagram’s classic square look, the company has offered up new features for users and marketers alike.
With an improved Instagram Direct that now includes threaded messages, users now have a way to send content from feeds as a direct message to friends. For marketers video ads have been expanded from 15 to 30 seconds, and advertising on the platform has been extended to both large and small marketers as well as to new global markets such as India, Mexico and South Korea, taking advantage of the more than 70% of Instagram’s user base found outside the U.S. Another new option for marketers is a premium product called Marquee that offers brands mass awareness and an expanded reach for a limited time and designed for special events.
Meanwhile, Facebook explains the updates it rolled out were made to take Pages from a desktop-centric to a mobile-centric focus for marketers. Benji Shomair, Facebook's director of product marketing for pages, said in a statement one of the main reasons for the makeover comes from observing the way people interact with pages on desktop versus on mobile. He said people message brands more on their phones, and brands hadn't been able to update pages to fit their business' specific needs. Now businesses will be able to enable e-commerce on their pages, and marketers will be able to more prominently display links at the top of their pages, inviting more consumer engagement.
