For the past few months, Instagram has seen big success with its ad program, although there have been questions in regards to whether the company will stay true to a certain format. However, it seems to be experimenting with new things, as a report from AdWeek suggests that it’s hard at work on a prolonged video advertising, in the hopes of attracting a few new brands.
The company made the announcement earlier today, indicating that marketers would be able to take advantage of the 30-second format through campaigns. This doubles the time that previous ads were limited to, coming in at just 15 seconds (the same length of videos that users can post).
This new ad format supports landscape mode, as part of the site’s formatting update that was recently applied, and will “give ads a more cinematic feel,” according to the company.
Brand marketers have been used to a 30-second format for the longest time, between traditional television commercials and ads that appear regularly on the likes of YouTube and, in some cases, Facebook. This way, they don’t have to compromise with a smaller format, in which its message could easily be hurried, missing some of its potential. In addition, brands will also be able to target specific promotions towards specific groups on the site, similar to how they can cater to users on Facebook.
As far as how well the ads will fare on the service, time will tell, but Sean O’Neal, president of Adaptly, is confident. “We are seeing impressive results from the 15-second ads, with overall costs and performance metric being competitive with the larger, more established video platforms,” he said. “We fully expect the 30-second format will deliver similar, industry-leading results.”
So far, Instagram states that it’s a success, pointing out a couple of case studies in the process.
Gilt Groupe reported an 85 percent increase in shopping app installs following a campaign that involved downloading. In addition, Kabam, creators of Star Wars: Uprising, has attracted users with its campaign for another popular app, Marvel: Contest of Champions.
“People come to Instagram for visual inspiration, and advertising on Instagram has the power to touch, inspire and move people,” Instagram said in a blog post. “Instagram ads have proven to drive strong branding results 97 percent of measured campaigns on Instagram have generated significant lifts in ad recall.”
On top of that, the company also introduced a new premium-priced ad format called Marquee, enabling certain companies to run certain campaigns for a small amount of time. The Fox network has already jumped on board with this campaign, advertising three shows set to make their debut later this month The Grinder, Scream Queens and Grandfathered. An example of this campaign can be seen below.
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Now it’s just a matter of seeing how well the longer ad format fares with consumers, especially to those who are used to the traditional 15-second format.
