Brands are testing ads on Instagram Stories

Cisco

• Brands including Cisco,
  Smirnoff, Budweiser, and Benefit Cosmetics are using
  Instagram Stories as a testing ground.
• These marketers have been posting free Stories to Instagram
  to evaluate what performs best among consumers, before putting
  money behind them for paid ads.
• As Instagram starts becoming a more crucial ad vehicle,
  marketers are looking to ensure their budgets are being used
  to support the most effective ads.

With more than
400 million users lapping up content on Instagram Stories
daily, the format has become hard to ignore for advertisers. And
now they’re getting savvier about using the nascent platform,
hoping to avoid burning their media budgets on lousy ads.

The likes of Cisco,
Smirnoff, Budweiser, and Benefit Cosmetics are using
Instagram Stories as a testing ground for ads. Specifically, they
have been publishing organic Instagram Stories or making small
bets on sponsored ads, seeing which ones users respond to, and
then dialling up the dollars on the most effective ads.

Benefit

For example, Benefit’s digital and social media team noticed that
tutorials had consistently performed better organically on
Instagram Stories. So when it launched its new Bad Gal Bang
mascara back in February this year, it ran tutorial-style
sponsored ads on Instagram Stories promoting the product.

Benefit is also currently running a selfie-style campaign
with infuencer Melissa Alatorre for its Brow Contour
Pro product, because the team had noted over time that such
native content resonated better with its audience in Instagram
Stories than traditional, highly-produced ads.

“We always leverage organic performance to inform our paid
content strategy, because it offers us an early read on what
actually resonates with our audience before we decide to invest,”
Laurin Hicks, director of digital marketing at Benefit Cosmetics,
told Business Insider.

‘We need to be putting money behind what we know would actually
work’

Cisco is another example. The company’s talent team is currently
testing Instagram Stories aimed at attracting external talent.on
its own account @wearecisco before
it turns them into sponsored posts.

The team is looking at a variety of metrics, from reach to
the completion rate, to determine which posts should be boosted
as ads.

“We don’t have a ton of money for paid media, so when we do it,
we need to be putting money behind what we know would actually
work,” Carmen Collins, senior social media and talent brand
manager at Cisco’s talent brand team, told Business
Insider. 

So far, Cisco has found that employee-generated content —
where employees share what it’s like to work at the company or
where diverse employees are spotlighted — have a completion
rate of 70 to 80%, outperforming other posts.

“Employee-generated content means it’s more trustworthy to the
audience,” said Collins.

Budweiser

And it’s not just teams with limited budgets using this approach.
Budweiser, which ran its biggest-ever commercial campaign during
the soccer World Cup this summer spanning more than 50 countries,
also relied on the tactic, according to Hugh Cullman, global head
of media strategy at Anheuser-Busch InBev.

It went a step further, and put “small bets” to amplify every
piece of content on Instagram Stories during the tournament, said
Cullman.

When it saw something resonate, it amped up the investment by as
much as 10 times. An example was an interview with Christiano
Ronaldo, who won man
of the match against a match Portugal had with
Morocco. When that story did well, Budweiser boosted it
further.

“It was a format that worked because it was a great way within a
24-hour period to showcase all the work we were
doing,” said Cullman. “Within minutes, we could tell whether
a piece of content was performing and whether we needed to add
more fuel to fire.”

The company declined to give specific budgets.

To be sure, brands have long tested various ads on social media
before rolling the best peformers out widely. But it becomes more
important as Instagram starts accounting for a greater chunk of
brands’ digital budgets. Plus, Stories allows them to essentially
test ads without having to pay for ad space.

Overall, advertisers are spending dramatically more ad
dollars in Instagram Stories ads,
according to online advertising platform
Smartly.io, with the ad budget devoted to Stories
jumping from a little over 1% to 17% of overall Instagram ad
spend between May 2017 and 2018.

“It’s a great tactic,” said Victor Pineiro, SVP of social
media at Big Spaceship. “Audience engagement is huge, it takes on
a more playful vibe, and it provides immediate insights.”