Not that this should surprise anyone, but you’re about to start seeing more ads on Instagram now that the Facebook-owned photo-sharing app has announced a new place it’s going to start slotting them in.Very soon, the company announced today, you’ll start seeing ads show up within the Explore page, one of the parts of the Instagram experience that’s been ad-free until now. You’ll apparently see them first not on the main Explore page, but rather once you tap on an Explore post and then start scrolling through the recommended similar posts that Instagram feeds you.
As we said, a move like this isn’t surprising given that Instagram’s importance to Facebook’s corporate empire continues to skyrocket, while the main Facebook app keeps … maturing, we’ll put it that way. In a company blog post today, Instagram spelled out the business opportunity here thus:
“Explore is one of the best places for people to discover, shop and connect with people, businesses and creators. More than 50% of accounts on Instagram use Explore every month. It’s where people go when they want to see photos and videos related to their interests from accounts they may not already follow.”
So, naturally, that’s a lot of user attention the company has decided to begin monetizing in a new way. To start with, the new ads will reportedly promote Instagram’s IGTV service that you probably aren’t using yet. You may start seeing those ads as soon as today, but they’ll be rolling out incrementally over the near future.
This also comes at a time when Instagram is under more scrutiny than ever, with Instagram head Adam Mosseri sitting down this week for his first US TV interview since taking the reins at Instagram back in October after the departure of its founders.
During his sit-down with CBS This Morning for a chat with co-host Gayle King, Mosseri confirmed that the company is continuing to think through the possibility of how to make “like” counts private, and even more importantly — that Instagram is in the midst of “rethinking the whole experience” of using the service.
