If you are a social media user, then chances are that you have uploaded a story or at the very least know about the Stories option on Facebook and Instagram. Stories are where people share and discover content they care about. Statistics show that 68% of people use stories on at least three apps regularly, and 63% plan to use stories more in the future.

Millions of users tap on the stories of the accounts they follow. In fact, of the 500 million accounts using Instagram Stories, one-third of the most-viewed stories come from businesses, and one in five stories gets a direct message from its viewers. Business owners should take advantage of this opportunity to allow their customers a peek into their business world.

38% of people said that after seeing a product or service in a story they talked to someone about it, and 34% said they went to a store to look for it. With results like these based on just Story uploads, what possible results could Story Ads have?

Instagram Story Ads

Instagram Story Ads can be found within Instagram Stories, which exist at the top of your News Feed. Story ads exist as dividers between the Stories themselves—but, like News Feed ads, it’s difficult to tell them apart from the rest of the organic content within the format. Ads in both the Instagram Feed and in Stories look just like organic posts.

As shown in the example above, story ads give you the opportunity to link within your post, but this option only exists for verified accounts or those accounts with more than 10,000 followers. When users swipe up on the CTA arrow they are then directed to your business’s landing page, whether that be your product page, to your blog, or to a lead form. There are ad objectives that exist that allow the option of adding these CTA links.

Instagram Story Ad Objectives

Instagram Story Ads are technically a separate placement and ad feature from the newsfeed Instagram Ads and is currently limited to different objectives.
You can use the following ads for Instagram Story ads:

• Brand Awareness: Increase awareness for your brand by finding people more likely to be interested in it.
• Reach: Show your ad to the maximum number of people.
• Video views: Get more people to view your video content.
• Conversions: Drive valuable actions on your app or website.
• App installs: Get more people to install your app.
• Lead Generation: Drive sales leads like email addresses and phone numbers.
• Traffic: Send more people to your website.

Traffic, Conversions, Lead generation, or Mobile App allow you to add links to your Story Ads which allow more actions to be taken by viewers.

Instagram is always making updates. Over time, additional objectives may be added to this list. When Story Ads was first introduced the reach objective was the only available option, the other objectives were released soon after.

Facebook Story Ads

Facebook Story Ads are very similar, if not exactly the same. Any differences that do exist are very minimal. Facebook Stories ads support every objective that’s currently available for Instagram Stories ads, including reach, brand awareness, video views, app install, conversion, traffic and lead generation.

It’s important to note that although they are similar, results will vary because they are two different social media platforms.

How To Make An Instagram Story Ad

Before creating an ad and if you have never created an Instagram ad before, you need to connect your Instagram account with your Facebook page. When creating an ad, you can use the Facebook Ads Manager or Power Editor.

Step 1: Go to Ads Manager and select Create.

Step 2: Select your marketing objective.

Remember to choose an objective that supports Instagram as an ad placement.

Step 3: Name your campaign and fill in details for your ad set.

The details that you will need to fill out include:

• Audience

• Budget & Schedule

• Placement

Under placements, you want to select edit placements. Then choose Stories and select the platform on which you want to display your ad.

Step 4: Create the ad

You will choose your ad format, you can opt to use a single image, single video, or carousel for your ad. After selecting the format for your ad, you will need to upload the file.

When selecting your image or video for your ad, there are some basic requirements you should be aware of.

Images need to be:

• File type: .jpg or .png
• File size: 30MB max
• Recommended resolution is 1080 x 1920 pixels (as low as 600 x 1067 if you have to)

Video files need to be:

• File type: .mp4 or .mov
• File size: 4GB max
• Length: Up to 15 seconds

You will have the option to track or enter tags for your campaign once you have completed creating your ad.

Looking for more help? Give Oklahoma’s Best Social Media Marketing Agency a call at (918) 609-3248.