A new feature on picture-sharing social platform Instagram has been introduced to give companies more options for advertising on the service.
The ‘carousel’ ads have been designed to allow users to swipe through several images, which will all link to a website. Instagram hopes that this will give its corporate clients a way to showcase their products more fully.
For example, a gaming company could present a number of stills from its latest release to showcase the graphics and story, while a vehicle manufacturer could display several angles of its newest car, inside and out.
Instagram believes that this will make it much easier for users to interact with brands, while being a boost to its Internet marketing efforts. The visual-sharing site has gradually been introducing more options for advertisers ever since its purchase by Facebook in 2012.
This comes at a time when growth for the social firm is very promising, with around 300 million users reportedly visiting the platform every month, as of December, 2014. This represented an increase of 50% compared to just nine months before.
With this many people using the service, any companies posting to their tailored news feeds would be better placed to build up a quality audience through social interaction.
Instagram noted in a recent blog post that it had developed carousel adverts after feedback from users, who reported that they would like to learn more about brands that had posted content that had “inspired” them. It added that carousel will provide firms with more flexibility to tell their stories.
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