Instagram Business

Rethinking creativity on Instagram with vertical video

All over the world, Instagram Stories is quickly changing the way businesses connect with and inspire their communities – creating new opportunities for them to stand out in a fresh, ephemeral way. And with more than 50% of businesses having created a story in the last month1, there's no doubt that it will continue to keep businesses top of mind in their customers' feeds.

As people spend more time on their mobile devices, businesses and brands are beginning to realise the potential of vertical video and its marketing capabilities – especially as this interactive, full-screen format is able to engage the attention of users like never before.

With the help of our Creative Shop team at Instagram, here are some of the different ways that businesses and brands can take advantage of the various creative tools on Instagram Stories and create engaging, vertical content for their audiences.
Progress bar

Utilise adverts in Stories' moving progress bar (at the top) to illustrate a moving contrast within your advert. This timekeeper is a great way to watch how people consume organic stories.
15-second Stories

As all video adverts in Stories play for a maximum of 15 seconds, we're seeing businesses and brands embrace short-form video with creative that pairs well with this context.
Profile photo

The profile photo (in the top left) is a simple yet great way to motivate users to navigate and learn more about your business.
Emojify

With the ability to add text and emojis to Stories, these creative tools are an easy way to customise native adverts in Stories and make your account stand out.
Pause

We're seeing loads of businesses and brands use the pause feature to interact with people and share something fun within their adverts.
Swipe up

Brands are always looking for fresh ways to connect with their customers and help them learn more about a product or service. That's why we launched links in adverts in Instagram Stories earlier this year.

With over 250 million daily active users on Instagram Stories who follow and share their passions every day, it's been amazing to see all the creative ways that businesses have been using Instagram Stories – enabling brands to directly impact their business objectives, whether these be sales and promotions, new product launches or education through tutorials.

To learn more about reaching your audience with the creative capabilities of adverts in Stories, click here.

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Two million monthly advertisers on Instagram

Our business community has grown to two million advertisers, up from one million advertisers back in March. People come to Instagram every day to share their passions and connect with what matters, and they are spending more time than ever on the platform producing and exploring content, especially mobile video.

Time spent watching video on Instagram is up more than 80% year over year, while the number of videos produced per day has increased by four times from last year1. With the emergence of innovative mobile video formats like Instagram Stories and Live2, businesses are finding more opportunities to connect with their audiences, whether on the go or in the moment.

Making pitch-perfect videos

In anticipation of the year's biggest film, La La Land, Lionsgate UK (@lionsgatemoviesuk) wanted to jazz up the launch with a series of vibrant, thumb-stopping videos made specifically for Instagram. Adapting the stunning visuals and sound from the box office hit, the film studio created ten customised videos that targeted key areas of interest for people on Instagram.

The dazzling videos used short, compelling versions of the film's trailer to captivate and inspire Instagrammers to experience the film in cinemas by promoting its A-list stars and singalong storyline. As a result, the campaign achieved a 24-point increase in advert recall, an 8-point lift in awareness and a 4-point rise in viewing intent – particularly among its target of younger viewers.

We knew Instagram was the perfect platform for this film, but introducing the younger audience to something new is a huge challenge. Ensuring cut-through in today's over-crowded market online is ever more difficult. In order to do this, we had to change our creative strategy to be platform- and audience-first. Working closely with the team at Instagram, we achieved this and the lift results showed positive contribution to the box office success.

Rachel Masuku, Head of Digital, Lionsgate UK
Improving the home with Stories

Do-it-yourself projects are an opportunity for creativity to shine, and Lowe's (@loweshomeimprovement) leveraged Instagram Stories to showcase their ability to help consumers think outside the box with even the smallest spaces.

Their recent campaign shows the transformation of a vertical space via a series of 50+ microclips, all less than a second long. Creating a flip book-like experience, Lowe's showed their audience how to transform small, vertical spaces into something beautiful and functional.

Dressing up mobile

Being no stranger to innovation and bold decisions, Italy's premier online retailer YOOX (@yoox) was one of the first brands to create video adverts using Instagram Stories to help position itself as the top-of-mind online lifestyle destination for stylish shoppers.

Embracing current Instagram design trends (such as symmetry and creative layouts), the campaign adapted an existing TV spot into a playful video that showcased the brand's website as an unmissable destination for fashion, art and design lovers – leading to an 11-point increase in advert recall and 6-point increase in brand awareness as a result.
We have always recognised the Instagram user as a very fashion-forward individual. We now work on creating top-level creative and video content that is native for that channel. The Instagram Stories format is a natural evolution in YOOX storytelling and we have already seen strong results in these campaigns.
YOOX

Motion is the new filter

As mobile video continues to evolve the ways advertisers reach and engage customers, Instagram's immersive family of tools is helping define the future of how people connect with the things that matter. To see how your business can use mobile video to stand out and inspire action on Instagram, learn more here.

Video by @amyjpeg

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Giving advertisers more flexibility in Instagram Stories

Since first launching Instagram Stories in August 2016, and adverts in stories in March, it's been exciting to see how our community of businesses has taken this full-screen experience and made it their own. In just one year, the stories format has changed the way brands connect with and inspire their customers – with more than 50% of businesses having created a story in the last month1.

As 250M people around the world watch and create stories every day, Instagram Stories is becoming an increasingly powerful way for brands to stand out and inspire action. And today, we're giving advertisers more flexibility with how they create and buy adverts in stories with added capabilities that include:

• Integration with Facebook Canvas, offering a seamless extension of the full-screen experience of Instagram Stories

• An uploading tool that allows businesses to use their existing organic stories as adverts in Power Editor and Adverts Manager, unlocking the creative tools of the native Instagram Stories camera

• Placement optimisation to run campaigns across Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network

Capturing attention with Canvas

With the ability to utilise Facebook's fast-loading full-screen Canvas format in Instagram Stories, marketers are able to use the creative versatility of Canvas to tell compelling brand and product stories. This seamless extension of the full screen experience allows advertisers to capture the attention of customers with just a single advert.

During a recent campaign on Instagram Stories, mattress company Casper (@casper) tapped into Facebook Canvas to educate its audience about its unique product benefits and warranty, as well as share client testimonials for the feel good brand.
Inspiring engagement with new creative tools

For advertisers looking to get the most out of Instagram Stories and its immersive, full-screen format, we're giving them the ability to now upload their existing organic creative added. This new uploading feature allows advertisers to extend the reach of their existing stories creative and have it live permanently within Power Editor and Adverts Manager for future use.

Now, advertisers can use camera features like face filters, boomerangs, and drawing tools to create an organic piece of media, and then repurpose as an advert. Take for example online flower retailer, The Bouqs Company (@thebouqsco), and their recent campaign.

Offering cut-to-order flowers from eco-friendly and sustainable farms, The Bouqs Company repurposed an organic story media it created with our stories camera by using our uploading tool to upload into Adverts Manager as an ad optimised for Website Conversions.

Instagram's new stories uploading tool allowed us to easily adapt existing content to the story format and distribute in a promotion supporting one of our August Bouq collections. We've found promoting content through stories is an engaging way to build awareness and interest in new collections. Our goal is to always engage customers authentically and share content with them that inspires and adds to their experience. Being able to leverage what we see working well organically on Instagram Stories to effectively and more efficiently reach customers is a powerful tool to drive impact with social.

Tricia Teschke, Sr. Social and Content Manager, The Bouqs Company

For a look at how the tools works, have a look at this demo from luxury candy boutique, Sugarfina (@sugarfina).

This uploading tool has made it easier for us to create adverts that feel native to the platform, and allows us to more easily repurpose assets that we create for our organic content.

Angela Hanks, Creative and Social Media Manager, Sugarfina
Capturing value with Placement Optimisation

Looking to build awareness around its newest beauty product Genoptics, Procter and Gamble's SK-II brand (@skii) ran a split-test to see how Instagram Stories performed in conjunction with its feed campaigns across Facebook and Instagram. It achieved a brand lift of +13pts for its new product and +30% reach among its target audience of females in Japan aged 18-54 versus running on Instagram and Facebook feed alone. Advertisers are seeing success in driving incremental impact when adding Instagram Stories to their campaigns.

And now, we are rolling out the ability for Instagram Stories to be automatically added to Facebook, Instagram, and Audience Network campaigns through placement optimization and allowing advertisers to take advantage of the efficiencies of running a cohesive campaign. We are excited to bring more flexibility to the ways advertisers can buy Instagram Stories. This feature will be fully rolled out globally in the coming weeks.
Moving forward

To learn how other businesses and advertisers are successfully running adverts in stories and using its versatile capabilities to share their passions with the world, check out this how-to guide and get started today.

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Spotlighting success on Stories: Instagram Marketing Partners

Earlier this year, we invited a selected group of Instagram Marketing Partners to explore our newest ad unit, stories ads and share the way their technologies can help businesses stand out in a more ephemeral way.

While the release of ads in stories is fairly new – only having been made globally available to all businesses back in March – we've already seen tremendous momentum in how our trusted partners are building solutions that further drive the objectives of businesses on Instagram Stories.

Here are some of the successful solutions our partners have built.
Focusing on the audiences that matter

Describing the work it does as «fun but focused», world-class ad tech company AdParlor is changing the way brands and performance marketers manage their advertising campaigns across social – particularly on Instagram Stories. Using creative tagging and analytics to build integrated solutions for businesses, AdParlor is helping brands streamline and scale their social advertising in a way that creates hyper-personalised experiences for their audiences. Brands like Today's Shopping Choice (@shoptsc).

Working with AdParlor and its unique Intelligence Tags technology, the Canadian-based home shopping brand was able to uncover micro-level insights around the creative elements that worked best for its recent campaign on Instagram Stories.

Not only did these insights help Today's Shopping Choice generate a higher return on advertising spending, but the campaign's results boasted (across the board) a lower cost per sale as well. The most notable being:

• 185% lower cost per sale when creative featured a call to action

• 172% lower cost per sale for blue colour schemes (over white schemes)

• 59% lower cost per sale in the fashion product category (compared to other categories)
We're big believers in the power of Instagram Stories, and have been working since day one to help advertisers understand how to be effective with this new format.
Paul Van Winssen, VP of Platform Partnerships, AdParlor
Driving optimisation and efficiency

Positioning itself on the cutting edge of innovation, fast-growing ad tech company MakeMeReach is empowering agencies and advertisers all over the world with simpler methods to create, manage and optimise marketing campaigns on Instagram (with ads in stories).

Emphasising a more intuitive user experience, the MakeMeReach platform features an easy-to-use campaign builder with highly targeted campaign reports and ROI optimisation to help advertisers increase their campaign performance1, while saving them significant time in campaign management2 – as seen during their recent collaboration with Disney (@disney).

Looking to engage audiences on Instagram with a unique ad experience in support of its upcoming releases, «Beauty and the Beast» and «Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2», Disney used behavioural technology from MakeMeReach to create an immersive stories campaign that would get people to the cinemas to see its latest blockbusters.

By allowing the legendary brand to view and optimise each stories ad it rolled out through an online pin board and adjust behaviour based on performance, Disney was able to achieve a 23% lower CPM (cost per thousand) compared to its initial performance benchmark on Instagram video ads.
In this campaign, we enabled Disney to optimise performance and reach a massive audience using qualitative formats. Instagram Stories are really bringing video ads to the next level.
Pierre-Francois Chiron, Co-founder, MakeMeReach
Scaling the mobile experience

As a leading content platform for businesses to create, publish and centrally manage original video ads, social tech company Vidsy continues to redefine the way businesses push the limits of creativity on mobile with its unique technology.

By streamlining the entire video workflow experience from start to finish, Vidsy's network of 2000+ video creators are able to help businesses cut their dependencies on third parties and take back control of their content creation – producing mobile video ads faster, more cost efficiently and at scale as a result.

In addition to this streamlined workflow, the Vidsy platform also enables businesses to improve video creative and drive mobile ad performance across social (with recent successes on Instagram) with its powerful video analytics and data insights – as it did with online sports nutrition brand Myprotein (@myproteinuk).

Using the Facebook pixel to track, optimise and retarget potential customers, Vidsy was able to help My Protein reach a greater audience by creating a user-acquisition campaign that integrated ads within the dynamic capabilities of stories into its creative – resulting in the campaign completely shattering expectations and delivering a return on investment of £3 for every £1 spent3.
We worked closely with the Myprotein team to produce creative that would utilise the full potential of the Instagram Stories vertical ad format. The campaign drove strong awareness and sales, highlighting the effectiveness of creative built specifically for vertical viewing.
Alex Morris, Co-founder, Vidsy

As Instagram Stories continues to evolve the way businesses connect with and inspire their customers, Instagram's growing community of best-in-class technology partners are helping businesses of all sizes get the most out of their ad spend with solutions and tools tailored specifically to their needs.

Learn how our Instagram Partners Programme can help your business unlock its true potential with ads in stories.

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Where passion meets fashion: Owning the runway on Instagram

From what's trending on the runway to what's trending in feed and stories, the relationship between fashion and Instagram has never been more immediate, immersive and international. With more than 200 million on Instagram connected to fashion accounts all over the world,1 Instagram has become a global destination for people to experience this stylish industry unlike anywhere else.

To see why 143 million turned to Instagram to discover, share and discuss the newest spring trends at Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2018,2 we teamed up with our in-house insights group Facebook IQ and Head of Fashion Partnerships, Eva Chen (@evachen212), to explore the ways that advertisers can connect with customers at fashion weeks around the world and beyond.

Fashion and Instagram are so intrinsically linked at the moment. I don't know that one can exist without the other these days.

Eva Chen, Head of Fashion Partnerships, Instagram
Inspiring action internationally

Whether in Europe3 or the US, fashion enthusiasts are spending more time than ever on Instagram engaging with their favourite businesses, designers and products – turning to it for inspiration they can't find anywhere else. For that reason, 45% of Instagram accounts surveyed in Great Britain, Italy, France, Spain and Germany follow a fashion brand or influencer to get inspiration for different looks that they can put together or buy. While in the US, people use Instagram every day to discover new products, stay up on the latest trends and share their own personal styles4 with popular hashtags such as #fashion5 and #ootd.6

But it's not just about staying in the know and discovering new looks. Fashionistas on Instagram appreciate the connection and community that the platform creates as well. Nearly half of Instagram accounts follow a business to feel a closer sense of connection to it – making many feel like they're part of an exclusive group as a result.7
Tailoring the video experience

With a name synonymous with American fashion and international runways, clothing brand Tommy Hilfiger (@tommyhilfiger) wanted a way to reach young people in Latin America and generate awareness around its new tailored line of menswear. To get its message across, the chic brand launched a video ad campaign on Instagram.

Combining its global campaign strategy, which featured videos starring Rafael Nadal, with exclusive local content created by Latin American influencers, Tommy Hilfiger was able to focus on a wide market segment8 and reach their target audience in separate countries throughout the region. The video ads attracted three times more video views than previous campaigns, and sales of the advertised line increased by 28%.

Instagram allowed us to reach an audience that is interested in our new tailored line in a quick and familiar way. We got the attention of female audiences who took a look at the Tommy Hilfiger products that were on offer for the men in their lives.
Paulimar Rodriguez, Digital Marketing Coordinator, Tommy Hilfiger
Measuring style and success

To generate awareness and buzz around its Spring/Summer 2017 men's collection, the French fashion house Louis Vuitton (@louisvuitton) used Instagram Stories' immersive, vertical screen format to create exclusive video content for the brand's new line.

And it's not just larger fashion brands finding success on Instagram. Businesses of all sizes are connecting with our unique community in various ways and inspiring action through feed, stories and live.
Flexing fashion on mobile

Stretch. Flex. Swipe. Looking to build awareness around its modern activewear and increase sales on its website, athleisure brand InflowStyle (@inflowstyle) launched an ongoing campaign back in February tailored specifically for Instagram. With the help of a Facebook Marketing Expert, the fashion-forward brand was able to create and implement a more dynamic strategy to reach more people likely to be interested in its products.

Using Facebook pixel, Custom Audiences and link ads that led directly to a product collection on its website, InflowStyle was able to capture the right audience and inspire online purchases through its stylish Instagram campaign. As a result, the brand far surpassed its initial expectations and achieved a six times return on ad spend, as well as a five-fold increase in sales.

Instagram has played a crucial role in our success. As a new company, we tried different ways to advertise. Since advertising on Instagram, sales have sky-rocketed and people know, follow and love the brand. Finding a successful strategy on Instagram has been a catalyst for our business and will continue to be as we grow.
Jenae Owen, Founder, InflowStyle
Capturing attention in feed and stories

To help advertisers gain a deeper understanding of these emerging trends and how they can incorporate them into their own campaigns at fashion weeks around the world and beyond, listen to Eva Chen's recent podcast interview and read Facebook IQ's in-depth article to take a closer look at the intersection of fashion and Instagram. And don't forget to read our recap of this year's fashion weeks to discover what the Instagram community buzzed about most.

How will your business own the runway on Instagram?

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