Instagram will sell carousel ads to businesses via self-service

Instagram announced it will soon allow advertisers to buy carousel ads on a self-service basis.

The Facebook-owned company will let advertisers buy the ads through its Ads API, Power Editor, and Ads Manager interfaces. Companies will be able to manage campaigns using Facebook’s Ads Manager within the next few weeks, Instagram said.

“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,” the company said in a blog post today.

“We’re excited advertisers have more tools to meet their objectives and as performance marketers,” said Jesse Pujji, CEO of Ampush, whose managed software platform helps companies buy and manage mobile ads that are slipped into the news feeds on social apps.

Above: An Instagram carousel ad.

Instagram added that over the past month it’s been rolling out new ways for companies to run their ad campaigns on the platform. Campaigns can be designed to expose the company’s brand to more people with more messages. Or, they can be designed to deliver ads to people who are most likely to click through and purchase something.

These same controls can be used to manage campaigns across both Instagram and Facebook.

“Ampush is especially excited about Instagram enabling marketers to optimize for website conversion events,” Pujji says. “This means that we will be able to optimize towards people who are further down the funnel and therefore are more likely to do things like sign up or purchase a product!”

Instagram has grown from nothing in 2010 to a user base of 400 million people worldwide, 77 million of whom are in the U.S. Facebook bought Instagram for $100 million back in 2012.