Facebook? Selling ads? On a social network? We know it sounds impossible, but it will happen within a year!
This isn’t just the Wall Street Journal taking a chip shot, either. Instagram has confirmed to the WSJ that, yes, your Instagram feed will be filled with ads instead of terrible pictures of food within a year. Of course, there might be a few problems with that idea.
It is also unclear if marketers will see the need to spend money on a service Instagram currently gives away free. Many, such as Nike and Lululemon are already active running free viral campaigns on Instagram. Meanwhile, Instagram has yet to set up a system to show advertisers the reach, or efficacy, of marketer content.
Translation: Instagram is going to have an incredibly hard time selling ads on a service already being used for free by major corporations to run ads. Also, Instagram doesn’t really have the metrics to support charging money for anything, just yet. In other words, if Instagram was hoping to apply the Facebook model to its separate website, then Instagram is screwed.
Essentially what this means in the long term is Instagram is going to start charging money to use Instagram. There’s just no other way this is actually going to work and attract advertisers above the people who have one weird trick for reducing belly fat. This, in turn, will drive users to another social media network, and so it goes.
On the other hand, one also has to ask what we’ll lose if Instagram goes down the tubes. But, hey, the NSA has backed everything up anyway.
(Image courtesy of Bryan_Chan on Flickr)