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How to create ads on Instagram: a practical guide

In this article, we’ll talk about all the advertising formats in Instagram, how to set up ads through Facebook and through the Instagram app itself, how to buy ads from bloggers, how to run ads in Stories, and how to properly analyze the results of an advertising campaign.

Table of context

Advertising formats on Instagram

Here are the basics:

Advertising with photo.

Interesting and natural photos are more appreciated in this type. Each picture is required to be of high quality. You have to make it so that the advertisement does not look like an advertisement. First of all, focus on the attractiveness for the user. Therefore, do not force your product.

Carousel

In this format, the slides follow each other. The maximum number is 10, but most often there are 4-5. The carousel can tell a mini-story of the brand, create step-by-step instructions, display product details, or make a panorama.

Video ads.

Videos are great for showing exactly how your product works. In addition, the video ad format helps share the latest company news.

Stories Ads.

People have a positive perception of native advertising. Stories are the best way to do this. You can post a lot of photos, add animation, text, etc. People are now more interested in looking at Stories than in posts.

Videos in Stories.

In this format, commercials last up to 15 seconds.

How to create ads in Facebook Ads Manager

First, you need to connect your Instagram account to your Facebook Ads Manager.

To do this:

1) Go to Facebook and click “Create Ad”:

2) Select “Instagram” on the left

3) Next you need to press “Login”.

4) And log in to Instagram:

The account is connected, now let’s move on to creating ads

5) Next, select “Create Advertisement”.

6) You mark the goal of the campaign. In our case, the goal is “Conversions”.

7) Specify campaign name:

8) The next step is to select the currency and time zone. And the next step is to configure the main targeting of our target audience:

9) Creating the ads themselves.

For different formats, it looks like this:

One image

Choose a picture from stock images or upload your own:

Next is a text box. It contains up to 300 characters, but after the fourth line Facebook cuts it and puts a ellipsis. The recommended length is 125 characters.

If you want to get traffic to the site, check the box “Add a website URL“. In this case, more options will appear. Add the URL and select the call to action button. The remaining fields are not used by Instagram.

One video

This is a video or gif:

Upload a new video. The video format is 16:9 and the quality is at least 720p. You can select or upload a video thumbnail. You can also upload an SRT file – a text file with subtitles

Fill in the text field. The recommendations for the number of characters are the same as for a single image.

Option “Add a website URL” – similar to a single image.

Сslide show

A looping video ad that shows up to 10 pictures with music. It’s like a carousel ad, but it moves automatically to the music.

Facebook’s Ads Manager has a pretty simple slide editor. Upload the images, set the sequence, set the timings, and select the audio file

Setting up via the Instagram app

If you already have a business account on Instagram, you can make promotional campaigns right in the app. To do this, go to the home page of your account and click the “Promotions” button:

Next, “Create a promotion.”

Specify the purpose of the campaign:

Next, enter the URL and select the desired call to action button:

Choose the targeting for our target audience:

Age, GEO, and interests are available in the targeting settings:

Specify the budget and the period for which the ads are shown:

Click the “Create promotion” button and send the ad for moderation:

Advertising in Instagram Stories

There are two main formats here:

In the Placements, you must select “Stories”:

One image.

Looks like a user story marked “Sponsored”:

One video.

You upload a video or gif of up to 1 minute.

Instagram Stories ad formats:

  • Video codec: H.264 Audio: 128 kbps, stereo.
  • Minimum resolution: 600 x 600 pixels (square format) / 600 x 315 pixels (1.9:1, landscape format).
  • Frame rate: no more than 30 fps.
  • Bitrate: If you use two-pass encoding and the file size does not exceed 1GB (you can upload 1.75GB maximum), there is no limit. Otherwise, it will be 4mb/sec for 720p and 8mb/sec for 1080p
  • Video aspect ratio: from 1.9:1 to 1:1.

Select the video thumbnail – what users see before the video plays. This largely determines whether they want to watch the ad.

A thumbnail isn’t necessarily a frame from the video, it can be created separately, like on YouTube.

How to order ads from bloggers

One option for promoting on Instagram is to advertise with bloggers.

You can find the right blogger on special exchanges:

● Plibber;

● Epicstars;

● LabelUp.

For example, this is what native advertising looks like with Yuri Khovansky:

Cost of advertising services from ordinary bloggers

We are not talking about highly popular people who have hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers on Instagram. Their advertising costs are also very high.

But people who have 5-20 thousand followers have much lower rates. On average, the price of an advertising post can range from 100 rubles to a thousand. Here it all depends on the subject – the difference in the cost of advertising services between broadcasters and narrowcasting bloggers can differ significantly.

Pros of buying. advertising from small accounts:

  • Small price – you won’t lose a lot of money on promotion;
  • People with that many subscribers try pretty well, presenting your profile as well as possible;
  • More chance of finding people who do content on the same topic.

You should not be afraid to buy such advertising, the main thing is to make sure that you will not be cheated. A responsible blogger will give you stats and a portfolio. So keep an eye out for the kind of activity potential profile, check the ratio of likes to the total number of subscribers.

The dangers of buying ads from bloggers can be in the following:

  • Scammed bots instead of subscribers. It happens that from a profile that had a million subscribers – percent 70 just disappears. Instagram’s algorithms clean up such pages, but the problem is that many people have bought ads for a pretty big price;
  • The second problem stems from the first: the price for ad posts. Okay, if it were justified by a huge influx of audience to your account. But most people are irresponsible about what they do. In this case, the customer suffers, because the money is simply thrown away;
  • Some owners of “popular” accounts are so thoughtful that they buy comments on their posts. Agree that not every person will be able to understand it. In that case, it is important to look carefully at the comments and who leaves them, in most cases, with a proper reading, you can identify cheating.

Consider two options:

How you should and should NOT do, successful and unsuccessful examples.

Some examples of interesting Instagram ads.

Timati shared his own thoughts and natively promoted pictures:

Famous car blogger Ilya Strekalovsky shared his emotions after repairing his iPhone:

HeadSpace offers meditation exercises. In an advertisement, a user saw that it is possible to relieve anxiety in 10 minutes. It is enough to install the app. The result is 40,000,000 installations in North America alone:

The Zaful brand made an ad by dividing a photo into several images. In this case, the mosaic effect works. This way you can show your product from different angles:

Burger King described in Stories how to properly place an order in the app. Elements of gamification are evident

Examples of unsuccessful Instagram ad campaigns

Consider also unsuccessful examples of ads – it will help to avoid mistakes in the future.

A company that sells home goods definitely hit the target audience. However, the image was chosen extremely unfortunate:

The geographic targeting was also wrong. As a result, apartments in Odessa are shown to a person from a completely different city. Moreover, no one monitors the comments in the post. That’s why there are accounts spamming with their ads:

You can often see spelling mistakes in the ads, you need to check everything carefully:

In the example below, a mistake was made when setting up targeting by gender. Concrete ads were only shown to women:

There are also ads without any text or call to action. The picture is good, but it is not clear what is being advertised and what to do next:

How to evaluate results

Instagram ad performance data is available in the Facebook Ads Manager:

The structure of Facebook and Instagram ads is simple: Ad campaigns → Ad groups → Ads.

A campaign corresponds to one goal, such as “Traffic” or “Reach. Within each campaign, there can be one or more ad groups.

Within an ad group, you configure targeting, placement, budget, and display schedule. A group can contain multiple ads.

Next comes the ad that users see: images or videos, text, call to action buttons, links.

Analyze performance metrics

The table shows the results and costs for each ad.

Customize the columns to display the information you want:

You can also sort or export results.

To explore each campaign, group or ad in detail, click on the name. An example of what you will see:

Some tips for advertising on Instagram

1) It is recommended to use a square format for advertising. The size should be 1080 x 1080 px. For horizontal images, the minimum size is best set to 600 x 315 px.

2) Test different buttons with calls to action. This approach has a significant effect on the result.

3) When editing ads, likes and comments are deleted when doing so, try to be careful.

4) Instagram doesn’t allow you to post long videos. So you need to learn how to make dynamic ads. From the very first second, you need to hook the potential client. Only then will the person take a targeted action.

5) When you advertise with bloggers, try not to do it too axed. In 2019, almost every Instagram user understands that opinion leaders are actively being bought by advertisers. Therefore, you need to be honest with your audience. Products should be thoroughly tested on themselves and only then offer them to people.

6) Don’t forget to set a themed and beautiful avatar for your own profile. It is forbidden to use ready-made pictures that belong to someone else.

7) If you use a link in your ads, it should lead to a page optimized for mobile gadgets. The user is unlikely to want to browse or look for the “Order” button. He’ll simply close the site in a couple of seconds and go to a competitor.

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