Dive Brief:
- Instagram announced on Tuesday it's adding a new business specialty – media buyers – to its Partner Program, which launched last year with three business areas: ad tech, community management and content marketing.
- The idea behind the Partner Program is to provide Instagram advertisers with vetted experts who can help them drive business on the social media platform. The program currently has more than 50 partners.
- According to an Instagram blog post, the media buying partners will be dedicated to helping advertisers of all sizes with media buying services to reach marketing objectives.
Dive Insight:
Adding media buyers to the Partner Program is a logical extension of expanding advertising on Instagram.
Ad Exchanger, spoke with George Manas, CEO of Resolution, an Omnicom-owned performance marketing agency and a new Instagram ad program partner. Manas told Ad Exchanger that opening up the program was in line with Instagram becoming more similar to its parent company, Facebook. After rolling out new ad formats such as video and product ads, as well as more potent targeting capabilities, Manas said it seems that Instagram is moving from a top-of-funnel marketing platform to one that is more top- and middle-of-funnel.
Some of these changes include self-serve carousel ads and the expansion of Facebook’s Dynamic Ads retargeting program to include Instagram. A recent TechCrunch report indicates that a boosted post feature of some sort may be coming the app in the near future.
In a blog post, Instagram said that the media buying specialty, which includes partners like Resolution and SocialCode, is only available in the U.S., but will open in other countries in the near future.
About the addition to the Partner Program, Laura O’Shaughnessy, co-founder and CEO at SocialCode, said, “We’re delighted to be designated by Facebook as both a technology and media partner for Instagram. The Instagram platform is driving massive sales and awareness for our brand partners. We’re also excited about growing adoption of clients running campaigns across Instagram and Facebook with the same objective. Our brand partners are proving that combining the power of both networks drives consumer awareness, action and reach.”