Instagram is making headlines again this week. The social media platform’s Stories, where users can add picture or videos for the world to see for 24 hours, has received an advertising update. The platform has been redesigned to help make advertising easier for businesses.
Full-screen content is made on-the-fly allowing advertisers without full-screen creatives to enjoy full-screen support.
Instagram’s advertising platform has evolved over time to offer creatives that moved past the 1:1 aspect ratio that was initially offered. The company moved to landscape and portrait content, but the additional creatives also caused their own problems.
Many advertisers chose to go directly to influencers, asking them to advertise on their behalf for compensation. Users can mention hashtags in comments to promote companies, and it’s still widely in practice today.
Instagram had responded to the additional creatives which made it difficult to run ads across multiple formats. Advertisers were forced to add some creatives to accommodate all of the creative sizes. Instagram aims to lower the creative burden by allowing square or landscape photos and videos to be automatically resized to fit full screen.
Videos that adhere to the company’s aspect ratios that are under 15 seconds will be automatically resized for full-screen adverts, too. The text will be placed underneath the advert when it exists, images that are taller than a traditional square will have the text unviewable.
Pixel matching technology is being used to ensure that ads look similar beyond all creatives. Swipe up functionality will be supported to allow advertisers to direct the viewer to a website or product offer.
The change is expected to bring more advertisers to Instagram. The platform also announced that they will allow Giphy back on to the platform following removal of the third-party service. Giphy’s service allows user-based uploads to fill in their media library.
TechCrunch broke the story of the racist GIF to Instagram which responded by removing Giphy from their platform within one hour. The removal was a direct result of TechCrunch’s report. Giphy took much longer to reply to the report. The media library took 12 hours to respond to the report stating that they conducted a full investigation into the matter.
The GIF was allowed to pass through the service’s content filtration measures which have since been changed.
Instagram has stated that they’ve reviewed Giphy’s library four times to ensure that there is no longer any racist or inappropriate content on the platform. New measures have been put in place by Giphy that aim to ensure that inappropriate content never makes it back on the platform.
Instagram seems to be satisfied with the new measures. Giphy integration was added to Instagram in January. Snapchat also added integration a month later, but the social media rival to Instagram is not as confident in Giphy’s response. Snapchat claims that until they’re positive that the issue will never reoccur, they will not enable Giphy.
Giphy promises that the company’s new content moderation measures will assure that racial images never make their way to the media library again.
