WHY YOU SHOULD BE DOING MORE INSTAGRAM STORY ADS IN 2020

NANA AGYEMANG May 22, 2020





Hello Guys, welcome to this post


It’s great to have you here reading this


Today's post tackles Instagram Story Ads and why you should be doing more IG story ads if you are a business out there.


If you are someone who stays on Instagram for a very long time, you should know how IG story works. Instagram users post their daily activities and lifestyle on their stories for their followers to consume. 


When Instagram rolled out the IG story ad feature, advertisers were very excited, why? Because the competition on IG feed ads had become very tough. Story ads gave advertisers the opportunity to experience a whole different format for displaying ads like the full screen and the vertical format. 



NOW TO THE BIG CATCH.



A lot of businesses and individuals on a daily basis utilize the IG story feature to keep their followers updated with their life and business. IG story ads give advertisers instant access to that large audience on Instagram stories. 



Now let’s check something cool: If you will check your account right now with me by going to your IG stories section, you will notice that after every two or three accounts stories that you watch an ad will pop up for you to watch. 



Great! If you are an advertiser, why won’t you leverage this opportunity to make your ads pop up over there as well? Currently, Ig story placement is cheaper compared to feed ads and other placement and it has a huge reach. 




LET’S UNDERSTAND WHAT INSTAGRAM STORY ADS ARE.



 Instagram story ads exist at the top of the Instagram platform where you find the IG stories. 



The dimension for IG story ads is vertical. Story ads are dividers between Stories themselves—but like News Feed ads, it’s difficult to tell them apart from the rest of the organic content within the format: 



 Story ads give you the ability to add a call to action link within your post as you create the ad—which, in the world of organic posts, is a function reserved for accounts that are either verified or have more 10,000 followers.

Users need to merely swipe up on your CTA arrow at the bottom of your ad, at which point they’ll be taken to your destination. 



There are seven objectives for which Instagram Story ads are available (Brand Awareness was added recently), and you can add CTA (call to action) links to any of them.

 

IG STORY OBJECTIVES

  • Brand Awareness: Increase awareness for your brand by finding people more likely to be interested in it.
  • Reach: Show your ad to the maximum number of people.
  • Video views: Get more people to view your video content.
  • Conversions: Drive valuable actions on your app or website.
  • App installs: Get more people to install your app.
  • Lead Generation: Drive sales leads like email addresses and phone numbers.
  • Traffic: Send more people to your website.

"IG STORY ADS ARE CREATED FROM THE FACEBOOK ADS MANAGER.

 IF YOU'VE NOT READ MY POST ON SETTING YOUR AD CAMPAIGN AND MEASURING YOUR RESULTS CLICK THE BUTTON BELOW"





Creating an IG STORY AD. 


Just like creating a Facebook ad, open the ads manager account, go through the process we discussed in the creating an ad campaign. The only thing that changes is that instead of automatic placements, switch the placement button to manual placement and uncheck every placement remaining only IG story placement. 




Note: You can run Instagram Story ads together with other placements—but because of the unique nature of Story ad creative, you’ll have to make some adjustments when you actually create your ad. 




Instagram Story Ads Sizes and Specs

You have three sizing formats to choose from when creating your story ad: Square (1:1), Landscape (1.91:1), and Vertical (4:5). Recommended resolution is 1080 x 1920 pixels, but you can go as low as 600 x 1067 if you have to. 

Image Creative

  • File type: .jpg or .png
  • File size: 30MB max
  • Length: Images show for 5 seconds by default

Video Creative

  • File type: .mp4 or .mov
  • File size: 4GB max
  • Length: Up to 15 seconds
  • Supported codecs: H.264, VP8

Meet these basic requirements, and you’ve got yourself a functional Story ad. Now, you can get a little creative.

How to Prevent Swipe-Through on your ads.


IG story ads look exactly like the organic posts Instagram users post on their stories. You need to really stand out by making your ad look like an ad and not look just like the ordinary organic posts; otherwise users will just swipe through your ads. One major problem businesses face is the challenge of standing out from the crowd while not representing a completely different content from what users go on the app to consume. 

You can use the custom audience feature to advertise or re-market to people who are already familiar with your brand. 

 Custom Audiences feature, can help you target Instagram users based on the five following segments:


    • Customer File: Email addresses, phone numbers, or any other information you’ve acquire in lead generation.
    • Website Traffic: People who have visited your website, blog, or a specific landing page.
    • App Activity: People who have interacted with your app.
    • Offline Activity: People who have interacted with your business, either in-store or by phone.
    • Engagement: People who have engaged with your content on Facebook or Instagram.

    Using custom audiences reduces the swipe through rate and increases your engagement greatly. Since these people are already familiar with your brand. 

TAKING CONTROL OF THE FIRST FEW SECONDS OF YOUR IG STORY AD 


To increase your engagement and to get great value for the ads you create, you need to have a great intro. Most IG Story Ads is in video. If you fall in this category, take a look at the steps below to win at your ads. 


Create something with a great intro sound: 70% of IG STORIES are viewed with the sound on, capitalize on this and hit your audience with a great intro sound that will hold their thumb and prevent them from swiping. 


Make the video yours: What do I mean by this? Put in items that depict your brand in the intro. Yes, your brand identity will be displayed at the top of the ad but when the user quickly swipes through, they won’t notice the brand. So put up logos or brand identities just at the beginning of the creative. 


Talk about what you are selling and add a clear call to action. So Instagram story ads usually don’t last long (15sec to 45sec carousel). Voice out what you are selling clearly in the time frame you have and add clear call to actions. A call to action is very important when you have the attention of your target audience. What do you want them to do at the end of the ad? 

 








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