Instagram is working on a new ad type called “Promote” for Stories to allow business pages to show their slideshows to more users without doing much work. Admins can choose to auto-target users similar to their followers, people in a certain location, or use all of Instagram’s targeting parameters.
Facebook confirms that the ‘Promote’ for Stories works similarly to Facebook’s Boost option that lets them pay to instantly show their feed posts to more users. An Instagram spokesperson in a statement said: “I can confirm that we are testing this feature globally. We don’t have an immediate timeline for 100 percent rollout, but will keep you posted.”
Instagram already has 2 million active advertisers, compared to Facebook’s 6 million. Promote offers an easy way to turn their existing Stories into ads. This also allows Facebook to unlock more revenue growth which is slowly declining. It dropped from 59% in Q3 2016 to 49% in Q3 2017 to 33% in Q3 2018.
The company has also launched Instagram Analytics in beta as part of Facebook Analytics. The tool goes beyond Instagram’s existing Insights tool as it includes new followers, website clicks, post impressions, and Story exists. With Instagram Analytics, business accounts can track lifetime value and retention rates for users who don’t interact with their content and create audience segments to see if people who commented on a particular post generate more value for them.
They can also analyze how their Instagram audience overlaps with people who visit their site, download their app or like their Facebook Page. lastly, IGTV hasn’t been making news like Stories since its launch in June, but a combination could bring some much-needed attention to the app’s longer form video hub. Instagram has launched the ability to share a preview image of an IGTV video to your Instagram Story. Friends can tap through to actually watch the full video on IGTV.