Instagram allows creators' organic branded content posts as feed ads

Instagram has revealed a new option for advertisers that allows them to promote creators' organic branded content posts as feed ads. When these ads appear in feed and stories, people will see ‘Paid partnership with’ along with the brand name on each post—which is very important for ads transparency.

Branded content ads for feed will be available to all advertisers in the coming weeks and for stories over the coming months.

With branded content ads, businesses have an opportunity to tell their brand stories through creators' voices, reach new audiences and measure impact. Using the tools available on the Facebook ads platform, businesses can reach targeted audiences beyond the people who follow the brand and creator accounts. And by running ads, they'll have access to measurement and can optimise and test their campaigns against their set goals for more effective marketing campaigns.

“We’ve long seen that customers want to discover fashion through trusted sources who have credibility, but organic reach on that content has become increasingly limited. So we’re consistently looking for more sophisticated ways like branded content ads to serve partner content to the right shoppers, instead of just throwing it into the social ether. Promoting content directly from an influencer’s handle inherently gives the post more authenticity than coming from a brand handle, and we’re seeing significantly higher engagement rates using this strategy,” said Liat Weingarten, VP of Brand Communications, Old Navy.

There are two main steps for creating branded content ads. First, branded content creators need to enable their business partners to promote their post as an ad, which they can do in advanced settings. Once they do this, the business partner will see the post on ads manager under existing posts and can choose to run it as an ad in feed or stories format.

Step-by-step instructions for both businesses and creators are available here.