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Ads from influencers you don’t follow are about to hit your Instagram feed and Stories

Ads from influencers you don’t follow are about to hit your Instagram feed and Stories

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Instagram is now allowing advertisers to promote branded content from influencers as ads in the feed and in Stories. That means you might start seeing an influencer’s paid partnership with Old Navy on your screen, regardless of whether you’re following them.

Plenty of creators make their living from posting sponsored content, but only their followers currently see their ads. Today’s announcement opens up creators’ sponsored content beyond their followings, just like how ads have already been showing up throughout Instagram in between posts and Stories.

influencers are truly inescapable

“With branded content ads, businesses have an opportunity to tell their brand stories through creators’ voices,” Instagram’s announcement post explains. Brands can use Facebook’s ads platform to get analytics on how their post is performing and optimize their campaigns. Like any other ad on Instagram, the branded content ads will be marked “Sponsored” at the top of the post, and have a “Paid partnership with” message with the brand above the captions. The feature will be rolling out to your feed in the next few weeks, and into Instagram Stories in the next few months.