My most optimistic take on that whole “monetizing Instagram” thing Facebook said

It should come as a surprise to no one that Facebook plans to monetize Instagram, one of its biggest investments to date and a hugely growing platform. But now that some sort of advertising structure has been confirmed, what exactly will the implementation look like?

Facebook has confirmed it will soon begin “monetizing” Instagram – an industry speak for “the ads are coming.” Since the social network’s acquisition of the photo-sharing platform, what the partnership means in advertising terms has been much discussed.

In exact terms, Facebook VP of Global Marketing Solutions Carolyn Everson told Business Insider, “There are many brands that use Instagram right now to try to get a feel for how to engage with their followers. We will definitely be figuring out a monetization strategy.”

While the headline “Ads are hitting Instagram!” is admittedly sexier, this isn’t necessarily what’s going to happen. Reading between the lines, you could imagine that Facebook plans something like its recent mobile ads push for Instagram. Those look like the image at right. 

These advertising instances are fairly unintrusive, given that they blend into the rest of your News Feed, but are obviously not content your friends posted. Of course, Facebook and Instagram are different networks, and seeing something exactly like this pop up in Instagram, amidst photos of Amaro and Walden-filtered sunsets, dinners, dogs, and plane windows would definitely interrupt the user experience. It would be out of place and sacrifice design. It would be bad.

It’s so obviously bad that I have to imagine that when Everson says Facebook is “figuring out a monetization strategy,” she isn’t just trying to find a nice way to say “we’re putting ads all over that thing, suckers!” She means it, and when she says that plenty of brands are already using Instagram for marketing purposes, she’s right. Warby Parker has amassed 38,000 followers and gets plenty of likes and comments on its posts, and it personally reaches out to users who posts photos with the #WarbyParker tag. Nike is similarly making good use of Instagram, with a myriad of specific accounts for users – consumers – to interact with.

Clearly, Instagram is a great avenue for brands to reach buyers, something Facebook has some experience with. Since launching the Open Graph, the way Facebook is going about marketing is through trying to make it a seamless, natural part of its environment. Sure, there are sidebar ads, logout ads, and, now, mobile ads … but most of these have been a part of Facebook’s structure for a really long time. Throwing this type of content into the Instagram mix simply doesn’t make as much sense.

Now what does make sense are tools like brand pages, promoted hashtags, and deals. Facebook could offer premium accounts to brands, wherein they could then pay for promoted hashtags and accounts (yes, like Twitter), making them more visible to users. They could also allow these businesses to run deals for users who post photos where they’ve checked into the location. There are a lot of unique opportunities here that aren’t just straight-up ads in our Instagram photo stream.  

But maybe I’m just being optimistic. If there’s anything we’ve learned recently, the user experience is absolutely, always on the chopping block. 

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How Instagram spawned an instant economy

As Instagram continues to gain popularity, startups and brands alike are busy figuring out how to monetize it.

This Thanksgiving, Instagram exploded. “We saw record usage as Instagrammers shared photos of their loved ones and holiday celebrations,” the company announced the day after. “Over 10 million photos that mentioned Thanksgiving-themed words in their captions were shared yesterday. For several hours, more than 200 photos about Thanksgiving were posted every second.”

But the holiday was only the capstone to a busy couple of months: The effects of Hurricane Sandy and excitement of the presidential election both sent us running for Instagram, translating into massive days of use for the application.

I bring these instances up not to simply point out that Instagram is a success story – we all know that by now. Rather, these numbers mean the fledgling economy being built around Instagram is about to explode.

First, there are the tangible products spinning out of Instagram. These have been around nearly since day one; think Casetagrams, CanvasPops, Postagrams. These services take your Instagram photos and turn them into real-life prints. But there are also innovations like the Instacube and Projecteo, a digital photo frame that displays your feed and a tiny projector for your shots, respectively. This new hardware reimagines how we use the app and experience its content. Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo bristle with Instagram-based project pitches. Hell, even Instagram is pumping Instagram-related products; check out its gift guide.

The fact that an image-sharing app has spawned printing services and photo memorabilia ideas isn’t terribly surprising. What is interesting is that fact that a simple image-sharing app is on the brink of creating an entire market filled with analytics and marketing startups.

We saw the same thing happen with Pinterest. The pinboard started as a fun visual-collector platform for users to obsess over, then quickly evolved into a marketer’s dream. Apps like Curalate and Pinerly (now called Reachli), came out of the woodwork to help brands create, monitor, and measure their Pinterest campaigns. The same is starting to happen with Instagram.

Curalate founder and CEO Apu Gupta sees strong visual elements as the common thread uniting Pinterest and Instagram, along with the markets sprouting up around them. “We’ve always felt that there was a larger trend happening – that consumers were increasingly engaged with brands using pictures and not words,” he says. “Pinterest is obviously a very popular example of this, but we’ve seen brands (and consumers) flock to Instagram as well.” 

“Consumers want to engage with brands visually, and do so in multiple places. This gives brands an incredible opportunity to tell their stories visually. Unfortunately, these visual conversations can be very difficult to track, monitor, and understand. As a result, a whole new market is emerging for visual analytics, which includes companies like Curalate. While we are not able to comment about the specific platform we will support next, Curalate will continue to help brands understand consumer engagement with imagery wherever that engagement occurs. We think you’ll be pretty excited to see what’s coming next…”

That’s about all the confirmation I need to know we’ll see Curalate for Instagram soon. 

And it isn’t alone. This week a startup called Nitrogram announced it’s raised $1 million from investors, including Betaworks (the brains behind the new Digg). Nitrogram analyzes a brand’s Instagram account to see how well it engages with users. The service has already signed on four of the leading brand names using Instagram, and a variety of pricing models (including a free option) should give individual users a chance to try it as well.

Nitrogram’s big-dollar investors have garnered it plenty of attention, but other tools exist, too. Simply Measured and Statigram both offer analytics for Instagram.

Brands are already taking to the Instagram platform in droves now. Will this ruin the experience? Not necessarily; if you don’t use the Discover tab all that much, then your feed of friends won’t be infiltrated by a brands’ content. But the larger implication – that Instagram may be the next social-marketing-platform du jour – is worrisome. News that Facebook plans to “monetize” Instagram recently broke, meaning the times they are a’changin. Targeted ads are a near certainty, although the Instagram lover in me hopes that a paid, no-ad version will be offered, or this type of content will be relegated to some sort of designated feed.

Social media is finally paying dividends: Twitter is now a media and advertising platform, Facebook has made a massive marketing push, Pinterest continues to court businesses, and now it’s Instagram’s turn. As Instagram usage and user numbers continue to grow, creators and startups alike are building for the platform, and Facebook is starting to talk about how precisely it plans to leverage its $1 billion purchase. No successful social network is ever going to be safe from this, we should realize. It’s an unproven, untested, unsafe market, and the businesses behind it want to turn it into something that doesn’t just delight users, but makes money. That’s why they’re businesses, after all.

On a more positive note, the way the market growing around Instagram isn’t as marketing-focused as it has been with other social platforms. An impressive amount of innovation is entirely user focused, and has nothing to do with giving brands a way to leverage the network. Products like Instaprint introduce real-life, real-time ways to experience Instagram, and there are a few platforms like Instacanvas, which allow users to buy and sell original images.

From such humble beginnings – which it’s stayed remarkably true to – it’s impressive how much Instagram has evolved. Really, how many apps can spawn a market of both physical goods and software projects? The answer is very few. Sure, it’s not mobile-only anymore, and lately it’s been making a big Web push, but feature and focus-wise, it’s still very much like the original Instagram. Clearly, the same can’t be said for the economy growing around it. 

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iMore Weekly Contest winners: iPods and Instagram photos!

iMore Weekly Contest winners: iPods and Instagram photos! | iMore.com Skip to main content Android BlackBerry iPhone / iPad Windows Phone webOS REGISTER|LOG IN iMore iPhone iPad Forums Apps Accessories Reviews How-To Podcasts Free wallpapers: iPhone & iPad Guides: iOS, iCloud, Siri, photography, jailbreak Free: iPhone apps & games, iPad apps & games Shop Online Cases Chargers Screen protectors Headsets & More Free shipping on orders over $50 iMore Weekly Contest winners: iPods and Instagram photos! By Michelle Haag, Wednesday, Oct 24, 2012 a 2:37 am 7

If there's one thing iMore loves even more than iPhones and iPads (and iPods!), it's giving cool iPhone and iPad accessories and apps to our awesome readers. This week we have...

Win free iPods touch and nano from iMore!
iPod touch winners
jim1969
Ipheuria

iPod nano winners
applecpugeek
maemei328
providco

 

Weekly Photo Contest: Instagram!

Grand prize winner - jamesdaly! (Instagram link)

 

Runner-up - Joebin! (Instagram link)

 

Congratulations everyone! Winners will be contacted in the next few days with information on claiming their prizes. Be sure to check out all the entries in the Instagram Contest over in the forums as there were a lot of awesome photos.

Looking for another chance to win? We always have a contest underway for something cool, so keep your eyes on the blogs for those announcements. Right now you can enter to win a free iPad mini, or try your photography skills and enter this week's photo contest! Details can be found at the links below.

Win a free iPad mini from iMore!
Weekly Photo Contest: Lens Flare!

Michelle Haag

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0 18 48 More of: Contests, Contest Winners
More of: Contest Winners ? PreviouslySonic Jump by SEGA for iPhone and iPad review Next up ?Weekly Photo Contest: Lens Flare! There are 7 comments. Add yours. Joebin says: Oct 24, 2012 at 3:10 am - 1 day ago

Thanks for organizing weekly contests! Congrats @jamesdaly ! I appreciate being mentioned with the cool iPhoneographers here at iMore. Now doesn't the runner up win the new iPad mini? LOL!

Reply Leanna Lofte says: Oct 24, 2012 at 3:21 am - 1 day ago

:)

Reply Leanna Lofte says: Oct 24, 2012 at 3:21 am - 1 day ago

Congrats everyone!

Reply ARLENwo says: Oct 24, 2012 at 5:28 am - 1 day ago

I just got paid $6784 working off my laptop this month. And if you think that's cool, my divorced friend has twin toddlers and made over $9k her first month. It feels so good making so much money when other people have to work for so much less. This is what I do, zoo33.com

Reply DayAnStef says: Oct 24, 2012 at 9:16 am - 1 day ago

Congrats to the winners!

Reply rosie0730 says: Oct 24, 2012 at 11:37 am - 1 day ago

Congrats to the winners!

Reply jamesdaly says: Oct 24, 2012 at 8:28 pm - 15 hours ago

Woah iMore you guys are the best! Thanks so much :) congrats to all the winners, and I'm stoked you guys liked the photo :)

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