This past Thursday, Instagram gave its user-base a sneak peak of what advertisements would look like on the social media platform. To my surprise, I was intrigued and excited by seeing their ad appear in my feed. I believe my reaction was due in most part to the authentic approach Instagram took in debuting its trial advertisement, pictured to the right, which had an accompanying comment authored by the company that calmly said "we are not selling out." Their debut ad's purpose was to show users an example of what an ad will look like on the gram: artistic, interesting and sort of fun. Instagram claimed that ads it allows on the platform will be engaging and creative and if they aren't users can complain, something that will force advertisers to try really hard. Also, in an effort to roll advertisements out organically, Instagram is offering its ad platform to only a handful of trusted companies which it has deemed worthy of advertising to its user-base, in effect its curating advertisements for us. And you can't really tell that the image to the right is an ad, which is great. It looks like a regular photo that would show up in anyone's feed and its not annoying at all, which is what everyone was afraid of, in fact its quite pleasing to the eye and hopefully all of the ads on Instagram will be similarly great. When Instagram debuted its trial ad a lot of people were upset, but a lot of people came to support the social media platform claiming that Instagram is a company too, a company that needs to make money. Facebook didn't buy Instagram for its simplistic design and awesome ability to take-up a large chunk of its users share of screen, though both are assets. Facebook bought Instragram for its earning potential and advertisements is how the subsidiary will make money, its that simple.
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