Instagram’s New Advertising Algorithm

With more than 400 million users a month and a growing legion of advertisers, Instagram is preparing to launch a new strategy that includes changes in its news streaming and advertising algorithm. This advertising, new for Instagram, has been used by Facebook for some time now.

Instagram’s New Features:

• Business-specific profiles
• More analytics showing the status of brand accounts (even non-advertising content)
• The possibility of turning posts into ads on Instagram from in-app on a mobile device

In other words, Instagram wants to make the creation of advertising content more attractive and it thinks that having brand-specific profiles and allowing advertising to be made through a mobile device will help facilitate this.

On the other hand, Instagram adds that users will want to keep this separated from the chronological order of their shares and that it will put the shares having the most reactions at the top.

R/GA social media director, Kyle Bunch, describes the situation as follows: “It may be an exaggeration to refer to it as the death of organic social media, but we increasingly tell our customers that if you want to promote your content without spending money and only want to grow organically that will be difficult to sustain.”

Is organic Content Under Threat?

It is not yet clear how Instagram will boost paid promotional content. However, it is certain that it will force brands to reconsider their advertising logic.

HelloWorld strategic services vice-president, Matt Kates, describes the situation in the following way: “One of the criticisms of other social media algorithms is that they have artificially pushed paid advertising content… One of the reasons why people like Instagram is that it permits organic content sharing, and undermining this could lead to losing users.”

Conversely, Huge associate director of social media, Kevin Del Rosario, doesn’t believe that the changes made in Instagram’s algorithm will hurt brands.

This algorithm might anger some brands, but experience has shown with FB that most likely Instagram will enjoy a significant boost in income.

Finally, while a “buy” button is not deployed just yet, speculation is that it will become available in a few months.