More and more people are moving towards Instagram Stories ads as it is seen more authentic than the regular Instagram posts. Instagram Stories are a way to get into people’s passions and encourage them to take the required action. Currently, about 500 million accounts use Instagram Stories. Almost half of the most viewed stories come from businesses and only a few get a direct message from the respective viewers. Instagram for business is an alternative to the News Feed ads that are effective. 

Instagram story ads exist in Instagram Stories that exist over your News Feed. Certainly, Instagram stories are also full-screen and vertical. So, when you view them, you see the content itself on your mobile device. When the story ends, either by ending it or manually swiping it, the next story starts. Like this, once you are in the format it is easy to access through a continuous stream that has a full-screen content. Story ads are a divider between stories itself, but like the News Feeds ads, it is quite tough to keep them apart from the remaining organic content. 

Features Of Instagram Stories Ads

Instagram Stories ads have the following feature:

• Running Stories Ads – Instagram Stories ads displayed in full-screen, vertical format, and your business can share photos and videos where your viewers get immersed in your content. It can target your ads by video views, reach, conversions, traffic, brand awareness, and app installs that help to drive business results at the same time.

• Insights – You will be able to view insights about your Instagram Stories ads performance. This is seen from your business profile’s insights section available in your app. You would also be able to view more social media metrics within Power Editor and Ads Manager in together with impressions, reach, and video metrics like for other ads.

• Audience Involvement – You can create stories on the Instagram platform with its unique and creative tools. Check on with the Instagram stories ads specs to create a wonderful story for your brand. The majority of the Instagram stories ads are viewed with its sound on, you should also share content that sounds as good as it displays. 

Objectives Of Instagram Stories Ads

Apart from the ‘Sponsored denotation’ and a probable increase in production value that looks like organic posts. Also, Instagram story ads provide you the ability to link within your post. This is an organic post that is reserved for accounts that are either verified or have more than 10,000 followers. To admit your post link, users would just swipe on the CTA arrow and they would be taken to the landing page. If you are interested in this function and prefer to send prospects to your product page, a lead form, or your blog, you would be at one time limited to only a few Instagram story ads marketing objectives. Currently, there are about seven objectives of Instagram story ads and you are free to include CTA links to any of the objectives. The following are the objectives of the story ads. 

• Brand Awareness – Using story ads, you will be able to increase brand awareness by finding out people who are more expected to be interested in it
• Reach – Display your ad to many people 
• Video Views – Get more and more people to view your video content
• Conversions – Drive esteemed actions on your website or app
• App Installs – Get more people to understand your brand and install your app
• Lead Generation – Drive sales leads for your brand like to get contact addresses
• Traffic – Send more people to your app or website

In ads Manager or Creative Hub, you can create Instagram story ads. Let us understand the process to create a story ad using Ads Manager in the following steps:

1. As a first step, choose your marketing objective.
2. Provide a name for your ad set and like the way you create a Facebook ad, you can refine your target audience and budgeting. 
3. Toggle on Automatic Placements, select Instagram Stories, and Edit Placements.

You can execute Instagram Story ads in combination with many other placements. Due to its unique Story ad feature, you might need to create some fine adjustments during the time you could create your ad. For example, if you are executing a single image ad, you might be required to upload individual images for Instagram Stories and News Feed. For this, your main goal should be to find a few iterations of the same ad type on many placements. Given the unique possibility of story ads, this is a new format having new creative parameters. You should think about the creative kinds that thrive in the format if it is in a .jif format. So, for your Instagram Story ad, you need to have certain specs and sizes that would best fit your requirement. 

Size And Specs

In the following few lines, let us see the Instagram Stories ads size and its specs so that you will have your story ads best fit your requirement.

There are three Instagram Stories ads size formats to select from when you create your story ad. They are

• Square (1:1)
• Landscape (1.91:1)
• Vertical (4:5)
• Resolution – 1080 X 1920 pixels, but you can go to less than about 600 X 1067 in case you have it

Few other Instagram Stories ads specs are:

1. Image Creative

For an Instagram story, you will be including more images on it. The following are the specifications for images:

• File type – .jpg or .png
• File Type – 30 MB 
• Length – Images show for about 5 seconds. This is the default.

2. Video Creative

For an Instagram story, you will be including more videos on it. The following are the specifications for videos:

• File type – .mp4 or .mov
• File Type – Maximum of 4 GB
• Length – Videos length show for about 5 seconds. 
• Supported Codecs – VP8, H.264

Ensure that these basic Instagram Stories ads specs are met, and you have a good story ad in place. Get creative with it and it would do wonders for you.  

Best Practices For Instagram Stories Ads

Now, let us see the best practices as to how do you add ads in Instagram stories? Before you start to create ads that convert well, it is essential to understand the minimum rules to create Instagram Stories ads. Let’s use see one by one:

1. Plan Your Objective

As a first step, you need to plan on your ad objective. You should be clear as to what you wish to accomplish with your ad campaign. There are many objectives for Instagram Stories ads, which include brand awareness, reach, app installs, more website traffic, engagement, video views, conversions, and lead generations.

2. Create Your Ad Creative

Once you are clear with the ad objective, you should create your ad content that would achieve your objective. It could either be images or videos together with creative elements like an ad copy or headline. Some tips that you can use to create stories for getting more attention are:

• The first few seconds of your Instagram story ads are very important to capture and maintain the attention of your audience. So, make it count and attractive. This would mean that your story ads would stand out more than organic posts and attract the audience. 

• Using Instagram story ads for your posts, it does not have more space for text elements as your visual content would take up more space. So, you need to create a short and meaningful message. So, your text in your ads should be short and get to the point directly.

• The main idea to create Instagram story ads is to increase your brand awareness and to introduce your brand to the audience along with its products and services. So, just displaying the ad is not enough. Your ad should have the brand logo and should be visible. This would mean that there should not be any design elements that distract or obstruct the logo. Also, the following options need to be focussed:
  • Place your brand logo or name without being a hindrance to other elements.
  • Emphasis more on your product mainly if it has your brand name or logo on it.
  • Go in for fewer colors, design elements, and fonts so that your brand name will be more focused and stands out. 

• Instagram story ads have less space to include text elements. When your messages are short it would best fit in. Your text positioning is very important. So, maintain less of text and ensure that it is visible properly without obstructing any other elements. It is an ideal choice to include your text on white space so that people do not miss reading it. Otherwise, choose a readable font even though you place it on any other visual elements.

• Mixing up influencer marketing strategy along with your ad campaign is an ideal way to increase your efforts. If you already have a campaign along with influencers, you can make use of the sponsored content in your ad. This could save you time. 

• Some of the ads faces swipe through from the audience. Create a custom or lookalike audience to avoid swipe through. Custom audience targets Instagram user’s basis the following five segments:
  1. Customer File – The basic information that you have acquired through lead generation like email id, contact information, or any other information. 
  2. Website Traffic – Those people who have visited your website, landing page, or blog.
  3. App Activity – Those people who have communicated with the brand using the app.
  4. Offline Activity – Those people who have communicated with your brand either in the store or by phone.
  5. Engagement – Those people who have engaged well with your content on platforms like Instagram or Facebook.

Also, you could try out some Carousel ads that are ideal for Instagram story ads. You need to be aware that Carousel ads would not be able to run in any other placement, except that it is built in its campaign. But this does not stop you from using this ad format as Carousel provides a good competitive advantage. 

3. Make Use Of Recommended Dimensions

Ad dimensions vary across all platforms. Instagram has its set of recommended ad sizes with which you can ensure optimum ad visibility.

• For images, the Instagram stories ads specs are:
  • File type – .jpg or .png
  • File Type – 30 MB 
  • Length – Images show for about 5 seconds. This is default.

• For video, the Instagram stories ad sizes are:
  • File type – .mp4 or .mov
  • File Type – Maximum of 4 GB
  • Length – Videos length show for about 5 seconds. 
  • Supported Codecs – VP8, H.264

4. Establish Your Target Audience

As a next step, you need to narrow down on the audience whom you need to target for your Instagram Story ads. You would find the options to target people based on gender, location, interests, language, age, and behaviors. Also, you can narrow your target audience based on the way people relate to your brand. You can do this for those who already like your page, follow, etc.

5. Choose Your Ad Placement

Once your target audience is chosen, select your ad placement. Facebook provides an option of automatic placement; it is ideal that you chose your preferred placements of ad manually. Your audience on Facebook and Instagram would be different. So, it may not be appropriate to display the same ad and contributions to them.

6. Create A Compelling Call To Action

Like your ads on other platforms, your Instagram Stories ads should have a good call to action that encourages the audiences to take the required action. Make use of simple action words like shop, buy, see, learn, etc. You can even test out various calls to actions to find out which one is feasible for you.

Conclusion

These basic tips and best practices would help you to create a successful Instagram story ad. It would help you to convert. You need to test and try out various ad formats, messaging, target options, visuals, and so on to check what works out great for your brand.