Instagram ads are awesome, or are they? Are you annoyed by ads on social media?

First things first, I'd love to know if you guys/gals are annoyed by sponsored material on social media as well? What was you experience like?

In light of Instagram ads coming to New Zealand and me setting budget for some clients, I had to dig a little bit deeper to see ROIs and effectiveness levels (if any recorded) and found some interesting points, so interesting in fact that I wrote a piece about it in our blog. The link will be down under
with addition of Facebook targeting tools, and the ability to combine both applications together for mobile campaigns; Instagram advertising looks very promising. But let us not forget the first responds from users to early campaigns by McDonald on Instagram. The sheer volume of complaints (when I say complaints, imagine you most probably are a teenager online, so it means "#s" and "@s") showed a very strong backlash. Many users were annoyed by sponsored posts and advertisements on Instagram application.

Why annoyed, you asked? Well assume you are using the application and instead of content you usually see or expect to explore, there is sponsored images and posts. With increasing number of advertisers number of these posts will increase as well. Users were particularly angry at the platform not advertisers. The interesting part of it though, is that even Instagram strategists expect this to happen every time they launch a new market. Sophie Blachford, Instagram's business lead confirms it by saying "we expect something similar over here, but we also know it's something that dwindles over time."

What is the solution then? Should we consider Instagram ads here in New Zealand then?
Short answer is, look at your target market and if it fits Instagram users then definitely yes. To begin with, it is all about advertising effectiveness of your campaign. When we talk about advertisement effectiveness, although we might see negative feedbacks from application users but that does not define effectiveness of an advertising campaign. There are many other elements involved in advertising effectiveness (many yet unknown to researchers), so if for instance you consider, the reach to users, brand preference and purchase intent, it still is worth it to advertise even though users seem to be annoyed.

The complaints faded away over time. After a while users were used to seeing sponsored posts and also advertisers became clever. Rather than simply advertising with a picture of a product like old days, advertisers are now using more subtle and adaptive methods to advertise. It is time to put the creative helmets on and think outside the box. The traditional methods of showing a product and making sales is not working, the media is different hence the methods differ. For example this ad by McDonald Australia, shows how smart an ad can get, you don't see any product yet you know this is McDonald. Not everyone, of course, can afford to do what McD can do but we ought to start thinking smarter.

Would be interesting to know your own personal experience with sponsored material in any social media.
The blog post: http://www.alexanders.co.nz/blog/lo....instagram-ads/