Instagram has 400 million monthly users, 80 million photo shares every day and over 3.5 billion photo ‘likes’ per day. It is needless to say that the world of marketing is excited by the long awaited arrival of Instagram advertising.

The question is, how can companies take advantage of this advertising capability on Instagram? And what do you need to get started? This article looks into the top ways to succeed with paid advertising on Instagram.

* What types of ads are available?

There are several types of ad formats available on Instagram:

* Photo ads: This format is a posted image with the label ‘Sponsored’ in the top-right corner. These ads include a call-to-action such as ‘shop now’, ‘learn more’ and so on. They are also compatible with ads for other mobile app downloads.

* Carousel ads: This allow advertisers to show several images in a scrolling format, offering brands an opportunity to showcase sequenced stories or products. These ads also have a call-to-action to guide users to a browser page within the Instagram app.

* Video Ads: They come with a call-to-action and the option to drive users to a website or mobile app. This is a great way to tell a story through compelling visuals in a quick, captivating video.

* Marquee ads: These can offer a guaranteed placement at the top ad position on Instagram’s feed for a single day campaign. An advertiser can show ads with a varying creative up to three times a day to the same user.

Targeting

With Facebook as the parent company to Instagram, the new advertising platform comes with some of Facebook’s perks, including Facebook targeting used on the advertising channel. Advertisers can use the same interest, category and behaviour targeting in the same way as Facebook. There are also attribution window tools available so brands can track conversions across the different channels and ensure that they are targeting the right audience.

Brands can also release ads on both platforms at the same time, adding consistency and cross-promotional opportunities.

Native advertising

Ads that look like ads will not succeed on Instagram. Users are looking for compelling visual content that encourage emotions, whether that be a desire to travel, motivation for their relationships or inspiration for their life in general. Successful ad campaigns on Instagram don’t look like ad campaigns at all, but blend in organically with the other content.

By seamlessly integrating the ads within the Instagram feed this way, brands gain trust from the recipients of their ads.

One of the main objectives of any campaign would be for users to ‘like’ or ‘follow’ the account. Therefore, it is vital that ads appear natural and trigger a positive emotion for the user. By achieving this, users will stay connected longer with the brand and get more exposure to future messages.

The idea of telling a story becomes more important than ever. However, the story to tell on Instagram is usually very different than what a brand would tell on any other social platform.

Therefore the communication needs to stay true to the platform itself and that usually requires coming up with a complete new set of communication.

It goes without saying that your ads need to be as visually appealing as much as possible to succeed on Instagram, considering how colours combine between pictures on your profile. Developing a creative strategy to your own Instagram is the best way to prepare for Instagram advertising.

With the growing choice of social channels a brand can use to show presence and engage with users online, it becomes more important to have a strategy that is adapted for each individual platform. Instagram, with its large popularity among UAE and GCC users, and now the ability to advertise and increase a brand’s reach, is definitively a channel to invest in 2016.

The writer is the CEO of Prototype.