We know that when it comes to social media advertising, video ads are often the most effective. One way to use video ads is through Instagram Stories.
Instagram Story ads are highly engaging and get strong results if you know what you’re doing.
With that in mind, the following is a guide to using Story Ads.
What Are Instagram Stories?
Instagram Stories have around 500 million daily active users, creating powerful opportunities to connect with audiences. If you aren’t already using Stories as part of your marketing, it’s something you should be thinking seriously about.
Of the 500 million accounts using stories, reportedly around 1/3 of the most viewed are from businesses.
An Instagram Story is an in-app feature allowing users to post not only videos but also photos. They automatically disappear in 24 hours. They’re meant to be fast and memorable.
When you post a story, there’s a ring that appears around your profile picture, and this is what tells people that you have a story they can watch. Your profile picture with the ring around it also shows up on the top row of the home screens of your followers, so it’s the first thing they see.
A lot of marketers feel that Instagram Stories are a good way to experiment with different types of content because they disappear in 24 hours, unlike the permanent curated feeds.
After you create a story, you can add stickers and filters, text, and more. You can also mention and tag people, and there are engagement features like polls and quizzes you can use.
Then, there are IG Story Highlights, which are collected Stories. When people visit your profile, you’ll find the stories at the top as a circle they can top. These will keep your most relevant stories around for more than 24 hours, so they can be a way to showcase some of the important facts and details about your brand.
What Are Story Ads?
Instagram Story ads are vertical, and they allow you to target them by reach, traffic, conversions, brand awareness, video views, and app installs.
In contrast to an organic Story, your ads won’t disappear after 24 hours. Instead, you can choose how long you want your campaign to be and the frequency of ads.
With Story ads, it’s seamless for the viewer. A user doesn’t have to follow your account to see your ads either.
Along with video ads that play for up to 15 seconds, you can choose an image ad that plays for five seconds. A third option is a carousel ad that lets brands play three different pieces of content within a single ad. These pieces of content are photos, videos, or both.
The Specs
All the feed photo and video dimensions on Instagram are supported in Stories, which are from 1:91 to 4:5. A 9:16 ratio is ideal for full-screen vertical Stories.
For video ads, .mp4 or .mov is recommended. If you’re using photo ads, it’s recommended that you use a .jpg or .png file type.
If you’re creating a video ad, Instagram recommends a 4GB file size. For photo ads, the recommendation is a file size of 30MG.
Video ads can’t be longer than 120 seconds, and the recommended resolution is 1080 x 1920.
Story Ads, on average, cost anywhere from $.70 to $1 per click. The cost varies, though, depending on the audience you’re targeting, placement, time of the year, days of the week, and industry, among other factors.
There are instances where an Instagram ad can be more than $5 per click.
You do have a lot of control over what you’re spending, though, since you set a budget. You can choose your budget based on what your company will spend on a daily basis or the total cost you’ll pay over the duration of a campaign.
Creating Story Ads
A recent survey conducted by HubSpot found that 50% of Instagram users prefer image-based ads with light text and product shots. Behind that are 31% who prefer video-based ads with real customers.
Interestingly, 80% of surveyed people said they didn’t care if the ad had a discount or coupon, which shows that what users on Instagram are more interested in is engaging content that shows the benefits of a product.
Some best practices as you create Story ads include:
• Think about the speed. According to Facebook, which owns Instagram, Stories are consumed faster than any other format on mobile. You’re getting a very limited amount of attention when you’re using Stories in any way. You want to capture the attention of your viewer in the first frame and get to your point quickly. Suspense isn’t a concept that works well in Stories. You need to dive right in.
• Your ad should use motion because Facebook reports these perform better. Motion grabs attention and tends to be a more effective medium for story-telling.
• Use sound. Most Stories are viewed with the sound on, and you’ll also want to consider voice-overs, music, and sound effects and how these can interact with one another to capture attention.
• Don’t try to repurpose an existing ad. If you already created an ad for Instagram or Facebook, you might just reuse it for stories, but this isn’t optimal. Your ad might not follow the best practices for sizing, and the experience might not be what you want it to be when you’re repurposing ads rather than creating them specifically for Stories.
•Use a clear, concise call to action.
•Text can be included in Story ads, so take advantage to emphasize salient messages.
A lot of brands find their Story ads are highly successful, but it can take you time to figure out. As with any other social media ad style, make sure you’re A/B testing and experimenting to find what’s going to resonate best in Stories.
You might want to start out with Organic stories first to see how that goes and get a feel for what works best for your audience.
