Instagram announced Thursday that the Facebook-owned photo-sharing giant will begin running ads in the coming months.
“We’ll focus on delivering a small number of beautiful, high-quality photos and videos from a handful of brands that are already great members of the Instagram community,” the company announced on its blog.
For now, the platform is promising users that only “an occasional ad” will enter their Instagram feeds from companies that the user may or may not already follow.
Instagram framed the move as part of an effort to turn itself into a “sustainable business.”
On Friday, MMW connected with Marc Poirier, Co-Founder and EVP of Business Development of Acquisio, for a reaction to the news.
“It sounds like a simple pilot program to test the waters with a few handpicked brands,” Poirier says. “It reminds me of iAd has done for Apple, an ad program with no scale.”
“It could be months, but more likely years until we see a mature self-serve, auction-based ad program with meaningful revenue,” Poirier adds. “Twitter has been playing with various incarnations of their ad program for several years, and to this day nothing meaningful has come of it – at least not when compared to the scale of Google AdWords, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads or even LinkedIn Ads.”
What do you think of Instagram’s foray into the ad game?