Instagram announced this week that it has officially launched its advertising API. By opening up an API to partners, marketers can now start buying Instagram ads and planning their Instagram marketing in a more automated approach, alongside their other digital ad buys on Facebook or Twitter.
Before this recent upgrade, buying Instagram ads required contacting an Instagram representative directly. Which means Instagram advertising was mostly limited to advertisers willing to make big investments in budget and time.
Soon all advertisers will be able to organize Instagram campaigns alongside their other digital ads. They will be able to cross-promote, plan, and monitor their Instagram marketing activity, including photos that aren’t paid-for ads, across other social networks, all while using third-party platforms.
Instagram has been taking steps towards this in the past year with upgrades like Facebook’s ad-targeting tools opening up to Instagram advertisers and “Shop Now” buttons for advertisers to link outside the app.
In a research note published last month, analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch predicted Instagram’s ad revenues could reach almost $1 billion in 2017, growing to as much as $3.86 billion by 2020.
Wondering what other companies are saying? Here is a press release from social media management company, Hootsuite:
“This integration will also make marketers and social-media managers more efficient as they will no longer have to switch between their phone and computer to track all aspects of a social-media campaign. For example, if a new product is launched, responses to comments and engagement with users on Instagram can be carried out from the same window that is being used to engage followers on Twitter and Facebook. Everything is in one place.”
Ads API partners that have been announced so far include some of Facebook’s biggest marketing partners, including:
- Kenshoo
- Brand Networks
- Salesforce Marketing Cloud
- Unified
- SocialCode
- 4C
- Nanigans
- Ampush
