By Hayley Gregory
Instagram recently initiated its Ads API, opening the doors for brands to advertise on the platform. This launch was bound to affect further change to the app’s advertising policies, as advertisers develop a better understanding of their goals and capabilities on the channel.
The latest update now allows video ads an extension of fifteen seconds, shifting play time from fifteen seconds to thirty total seconds for branded videos. According to Instagram, this update will allow for “a more cinematic feel.” As the channel recently adopted landscape mode capabilities as well, their emphasis on the visual remains strong.
This change is significant given the current enthusiasm for video on social, with statistics showing that videos are viewed nearly twice as often as static posts. The caveat here is that shorter videos tend to perform better. Nielsen reports that the “majority of the campaign value for ad recall, brand awareness and purchase intent was generated within just 10 seconds of watching the video.” If ten seconds seems the ideal amount of time to make an impression and maintain an audience’s attention on social media, then why extend the life of a video ad?
It would seem both Instagram and brands aim to win views by utilizing the visual power of the platform to captivate viewers. This is intriguing in terms of creative ambition and meaningful in the effect it could have on the future of social video. The channel is currently only open to select brands, but since Instagram is owned by Facebook, this latest shift to longer, more cinematic video could impact best practices on other social networks. With Instagram remaining a less-defined territory for marketers, this latest push for longer video ads could yield telling results.
– Hayley Gregory is an Account Coordinator at Zócalo Group.
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