Business Insider reports Facebook has confirmed ads are coming to Instagram, the popular photo sharing network it acquired in a $1 billion deal. The confirmation comes from Carolyn Everson, Vice President of Global Marketing Solutions at Facebook. She told BI ads are coming at their Ignition 2012 conference.
BI: Will you put ads in Instagram?
CE: Eventually we’ll figure out a way to monetize Instagram.
BI: How far are you away from figuring that out?
CE: Well, Instagram continues to grow incredibly fast and we’re still a very small team when you think about the amount of people they are reaching. 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. When that will happen, I can’t comment, but it’s going to happen.
This isn’t surprising news by any means; when you acquire a company in a billion dollar deal, you should at least try to make money some how right? Now, all of those users and photos are ripe for monetization.
Instagram started out for iOS users only but is also now available to Android users. It has remained ad-free, which has been an integral part of the photo sharing and viewing experience.
This July, Instagram announced it had pass 80 million users and over 4 billion photos shared. Just yesterday, one of the most significant updates was released for its iOS app.
My guess would we probably might see sponsored images or pages appearing within Instagram timelines, similar to what we’re already seeing on Facebook.
Would ads stop you from using Instagram?
