Instagram Brand Profiles are Coming Soon (Finally!)

Earlier this year, Instagram confirmed that it was working on a way to promote advertising and brand activity on its platform, including analytics tools and a way to purchase Instagram ads via mobile device.

In terms of executing a sound advertising strategy, it looks like Instagram’s taking a few cues from its parent company, Facebook. According to a spokesperson, Instagram will be building out specific profiles for businesses (similar to Facebook Pages), analytics data on how brands’ posts are doing (even if they aren’t promoted), and a way for brands to purchase ads from a mobile device. Currently, brands can only create Instagram ads through Facebook Ads Manager. With this new buildout, brands can be creating ads through the existing Instagram account or a standalone app the company hasn’t released yet.

Currently, Instagram brand profiles are being tested on a small group of users, but according to a spokesperson, should be available for everyone within the next few months. These new profiles will offer a variety of features to help businesses promote their brand such as a contact button, access to maps and directions, and the ability to categorize their business by type.

These screenshots were first posted by the blog Later.com:

You can see that the most prominent feature on these new business profiles is the white contact button found to the left of the “follow” button.

When the “Contact” button is pressed, a pop-up menu appears offering directions to the business or ability to contact the business via email.The map feature will be especially useful for local businesses who, up to this point, have been working around the ability to include business information like addresses in their bio.

Instagram business profiles will be categorized too, with a business type label found underneath the page name. This will be useful in terms of letting customers know what kind of business they’re visiting and allow Instagram to curates its content in the future.

In the coming months, expect Instagram to be even more focused on building out its advertising and improving its experience for business owners. Advertisers who are already familiar with Facebook’s advertising offerings can expect very similar features from Instagram, and hopefully receive the same return on marketing dollars. Instagram already released similar Facebook-like targeting features last year and focused on including video on the platform, a bold move that Facebook introduced more than two years ago. Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg, during a last earnings call, mentioned that 98 out of the top 100 advertisers on Facebook are already marketing on Instagram.

Again, Instagram has not confirmed an exact date for the launch of these new brand tools, but we should know more in the next coming months.