Instagram reels get advertising. The company announced today that it is rolling out ads in its short-form video platform and TikTok rival Reels to businesses and advertisers worldwide. The ads are up to 30 seconds long, like reels themselves, and are vertical in format, similar to ads in Instagram Stories. Just like Reels, the new ads will loop around and people can like, comment, and save them, just like other Reels videos.
The company had previously tested Reels ads earlier this year in select markets, including India, Brazil, Germany and Australia, then extended these tests recently to Canada, France, UK and USA. Early adopters of the new format include brands such as BMW, Nestlé (Nespresso), Louis Vuitton, Netflix, Uber, and others.
Instagram informs us that the ads will appear in most of the places where users view Reels content, including the Reels tab, Reels in Stories, Reels in Explore, and Reels in your Instagram feed, and between individual reels posted by users appear. However, in order for a Reels ad to be displayed, the user must first be in the immersive full-screen Reels viewer.
Photo credits: Instagram
The company couldn’t tell how many times a user might see a Reels ad because the number of ads a viewer might come across can vary based on their use of Instagram. But the company does monitor user sentiment regarding the ads themselves and the general commercialism of reels, it says.
Like Instagram’s other advertising products, Reels Ads are launched with an auction-based model. So far, however, Instagram has been refusing to share any kind of performance metrics on how these ads are performing based on testing. Nor does it yet provide advertisers with any creator tools or templates to get them started with Reels ads. Instead, Instagram likely assumes that advertisers already have creative assets or know how to create them, as the Reels ads are similar to other vertical video ads found elsewhere, including Instagram’s competitors.
While vertical video has already shown the potential to drive consumers to ecommerce shopping sites, Instagram has yet to take advantage of the Reels ads to bring users to its integrated Instagram shopsalthough this seems like a natural next step as it tries to tie the different parts of its app together.
But maybe before this move, Instagram needs to make Reels a more compelling target – slightly different TikTok rivals that now include both Snap and YouTube – through direct funding for creator content. Meanwhile, Instagram had Offers made to select TikTok stars directly.
The launch of Instagram Reels ads follows news of TikTok’s rising ad prices. Bloomberg reported This month, TikTok is asking for more than $ 1.4 million for a home page acquisition ad in the United States beginning in the third quarter, up to $ 1.8 million by the fourth quarter and more than $ 2 million on a holiday -Dollars will go up. While the company is still building its ad team and advertisers haven’t yet allocated large portions of their video budget to the app, that tends to follow user growth – and TikTok now has over 100 million monthly active users in the US
Both Apps, Instagram and TikTok now have more than a billion monthly active users worldwide, although Reels is only part of the larger Instagram platform. For comparison, Instagram Stories is used by some 500 million usersdemonstrating Instagram’s ability to drive traffic to different areas of its app. Instagram declined to share how many users Reels has to date.