Insta Advertising with Adrian Moxley

We all enjoy taking photos and sharing them online, but what happens when the pictures get placed with ads, camouflaging the once pure user-generated environment? With Instagram announcing it is to host ads, Adrian Moxley, co-founder and CMO of visual classification company WeSEE, discusses the move for the successful app to start targeting users and the possible opportunity for advertisers to market themselves based on visual content alone.

Instagram’s journey has been an interesting one to follow over the past few years. When the photo sharing app launched in 2010, its innovative photo editing and social capabilities resonated with consumers straight away. It brought a modern cool factor to photography by offering a creative and convenient way of capturing and sharing the world around you. Exploding almost instantly, just two years following its launch, Instagram was acquired by Facebook in a savvy move that expanded the photo app’s network. But following the acquisition by a listed company, the question was raised: would Instagram be able to prove it could be part of a profitable business model?

Using the users

Facebook’s attempts to monetise its offering since IPO are well documented. However, until recently, it refrained from including ads within the Instagram app, wary of compromising the user experience of the service. However, with a user base of 150 million as of September 2013, it was clear that this was an untapped opportunity and likely to have been placed on anticipated future revenues during the Facebook acquisition. Therefore it was no surprise when Instagram announced it would roll out an advertising model within the year. What’s interesting in this case is to consider how the ads will be targeted. Will the advertisers who choose to use the platform have access to Facebook’s demographic data, and, as such, target based on age, gender and location and specific interests? If so, this advertising will only be ‘targeted’ in the broadest sense of the word and will not make use of the site’s key asset: visual imagery.

Indeed, Instagram’s strength lies in its vast cache of visual imagery, ripe for targeted advertising based on content. It’s said that a picture tells a thousand words, and Instagram’s images can tell us much about those who take and share them. People use Instagram to create their own content, offering up images that speak volumes about their interests and preferences in the here and now.

Visual value

However, advertisers relying on keyword text-tagging as a mainstay for targeting will find it difficult to classify this content.  Because the images are user-generated, they do not necessarily have associated text tags. Luckily, today’s advertisers have sophisticated technologies at their fingertips that can help them navigate this visual, social landscape. Advertisers can overcome challenges posed by user-generated content by using visual recognition technology to identify and classify the images posted to Instagram. This ensures that ads delivered against them are highly targeted and relevant.  By being able to understand, analyse and classify that content, advertisers can reach and engage with prospects in ways that are more tailored than ever before.

It’s important for Instagram to leverage the right approach to advertising against its visual landscape. Otherwise, it can risk alienating its user base with poorly-targeted, irrelevant and intrusive advertising. The company is at an exciting point in its development and it’ll be interesting to see its next steps as the service matures. With some careful visual classification, Instagram has the potential to become an advertiser’s secret weapon for targeted engagement, for the first time, based wholly on visual imagery.