Tim Peterson says, “Instagram’s direct-response advertising business was born a year ago with a silver spoon in its mouth. Its parent company, Facebook, had spent years developing ad formats, honing targeting capabilities and building measurement systems and attracting marketers that didn’t want people to only see their ads but to act on them, to click on them and install an app, visit a product site, buy something. Conceivably Instagram could have inherited that business and its customers and called it a day, like a restaurateur’s heir opening a cafe next door. But it’s not that easy, and in Instagram’s case, it hasn’t been.

Instagram’s ad business has not yet totally clicked with direct-response advertisers, based on interviews with several agency execs.

There are natural growing pains, like convincing marketers who are very comfortable spending their money on Google’s search ads and Facebook’s ads to try something new. Then there are the perception problems spurred by the look-heavy, link-light app catering to brand advertisers since debuting its first ads in October 2013”.

Instagram’s direct-response ads haven’t totally clicked with advertisers

Marketing Land

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