The Facebook-owned app is ready to start making money by inserting ads into the feeds of its US users. October 3, 2013 1:19 PM PDT Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom at the company's press event for its video offering. Instagram will soon be inserting photo and video ads into the stream for its US members, the Facebook-owned service announced Thursday. People will notice the "occasional ad" in the "next couple months," Instagram said. "Seeing photos and videos from brands you don't follow will be new, so we'll start slow," Instagram said in a blog post on the change. "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 change, though expected, will be a radical one for the more than 150 million people who use Instagram's application on a monthly basis. Though a boon for parent-company Facebook's bottom line, the ads bring with them the potential to alienate active users and could stir up controversy like the one that bubbled up when Instagram changed its terms of service at the end of last year. Instagram, for its part, promised magazine-quality ads that "feel as natural to Instagram as the photos and videos many of you already enjoy from your favorite brands." The service also said that users can, just as on Facebook, click to hide the ads they don't like. This story is developing...
The Facebook-owned app is ready to start making money by inserting ads into the feeds of its US users.
Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom at the company's press event for its video offering.
Instagram will soon be inserting photo and video ads into the stream for its US members, the Facebook-owned service announced Thursday. People will notice the "occasional ad" in the "next couple months," Instagram said.
"Seeing photos and videos from brands you don't follow will be new, so we'll start slow," Instagram said in a blog post on the change. "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 change, though expected, will be a radical one for the more than 150 million people who use Instagram's application on a monthly basis. Though a boon for parent-company Facebook's bottom line, the ads bring with them the potential to alienate active users and could stir up controversy like the one that bubbled up when Instagram changed its terms of service at the end of last year.
Instagram, for its part, promised magazine-quality ads that "feel as natural to Instagram as the photos and videos many of you already enjoy from your favorite brands." The service also said that users can, just as on Facebook, click to hide the ads they don't like.
This story is developing...
