Any good for brands? Instagram reveals ‘promising’ results of its first sponsored ad campaigns

It’s been a couple of months since Instagram introduced ads into its News Feed and there have been some users that have criticized and others that supported the decision. But how have they performed, exactly? The company just published a post sharing the results of some of its first sponsored campaigns.

The conclusion that Instagram drew up: initial results are “promising”.

Instagram looked at four ad campaigns, including the ones from Levi’s and Ben & Jerry’s. It measured reach, ad recall, and awareness to ascertain how valuable and effective they were. It shrugged off looking at comments, likes, and followers — which is probably good since advertisers may be looking at traditional ad metrics to determine their Return on Investment, as opposed to more followers and social actions.

Based on its sample size, the Facebook-owned company found that all of the ads delivered positive results across the stated metrics. Specifically, they were able to deliver the “broad reach our advertisers were seeking”, generated a 32-point incremental lift in ad recall per campaign, and had a 10-point incremental lift in brand message awareness per campaign.

While these results are not bad, it’s still too early to say that Instagram ads will work for all brands. The firm needs to bring on additional advertisers to see how the platform works at scale, but it acknowledges that additional optimization needs to be done to improve the process.

➤ First Look — Measuring the Effectiveness of Brand Advertising Campaigns on Instagram (Instagram)

See related: Instagram’s first ad generated 370% more ‘likes’ for Michael Kors, says Nitrogram

Photo credit: LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP/Getty Images