Ads From Instagram Influencers You Don’t Follow Will Soon Hit Your Feeds and Stories

In just few weeks from now, Instagram will allow advertisers promote their branded content and products from influencers as ads in the feed and in stories. This literally implies you might start viewing an influencer’s sponsored content posts appearing, regardless of whether you’re following them or not.

Announced late Tuesday, the Facebook-owned photo sharing platform will opens up creators’ sponsored content beyond their followings, just like how ads have already been showing up throughout Instagram in between posts and Stories. The Instagram feed will be coming in weeks while the ads in stories will appear in a few months.

“With branded content ads, businesses have an opportunity to tell their brand stories through the creators’ voices. 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.” Instagram’s announcement reads

However, the move will allow both brands and influencers to increase the reach of the paid posts, and target a bigger and more specific audience, such as women between the ages of 18 and 34 who are interested in beauty products and fashion.

Equally, it is also a means by which Instagram can tap into the growing influencer marketing industry to make more money from the new branded contents ads.

While Instagram has always been criticized for lack of transparency with sponsored post, these branded content ads are, however an effort to increase transparency about influencer and brand deals.