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Instagram Is Giving Advertisers Self-Serve Access To Carousel Ads

Starting in the next few weeks, the multi-image ads will be available in Facebook's self-service ad dashboards.

Martin Beck on October 30, 2015 at 3:36 pm

Instagram has announced that it will soon allow advertisers to help themselves to carousel ads. Instagram will enable purchase of the ads through parent company Facebook’s Power Editor and Ad Manager platforms and the Instagram ads API in the next few weeks.

“By opening up the way advertisers can buy, businesses of all sizes around the world now have more flexible targeting, call-to-action button options, and can customize their offsite links to help drive maximum return,” Instagram wrote in a blog post.

Launched in June, carousel ads offer advertisers the chance to create promoted posts with up with five images that people can swipe through. Notably, carousel ads were the first Instagram posts that included links that people could click or tap on to visit sites off Instagram.

Instagram said carousel ads have been working well, on average producing an additional 2.5 point lift in ad recall compared to single photo campaigns. And French retailer L’Occitane reported 58 percent higher lift in conversion rate compared to their campaigns using single-photo link ads.

Now Instagram will give all advertisers the ability to use the format, as it continues to open its ad products to all comers. Among the recent new additions are the ability to optimize for reach and frequency or for conversions. From the blog post:

By optimizing for reach & frequency, advertisers can manage the number of people they reach with their Instagram ads and how frequently the ads are shown. To make media planning and buying even easier, advertisers can also control the reach and frequency of campaigns across Instagram and Facebook.
In addition, performance advertisers can now optimize delivery of their ads to people who are most likely to take an action on their website — driving more efficient performance on Instagram, or for campaigns running across Facebook and Instagram. Our goal is to remove friction and give businesses the most bang for their advertising buck.