Instagram link ads launched in fall 2015, allowing advertisers to elicit action from ads—like driving website clicks, mobile app installs and website conversions. Since driving offsite isn’t an organic behavior on the platform, we set out to help advertisers turn intent into action by increasing the number of ways Instagrammers can interact with ad content. Through a series of studies, we learned that the presence of our call to action button was not well-known in the original ad format. In an eye-tracking study, we concluded people simply weren’t seeing the button tucked in the bottom right corner of an ad. So starting in June, an enhanced call to action button was released—which extends across the full width of the ad with the call to action text appearing on the left hand side. The redesign has been successful, with performance increasing more than 45%.¹

With the updated call to action button paired with Instagram’s precise targeting, advertisers are seeing strong performance with link ads. To acquire new subscriptions of its beauty brand Honest Beauty, The Honest Company founded by Jessica Alba turned to Instagram’s performance-based ads. “In our business it’s never been more important to reach the right person with the right message at the right time, especially on platforms like Instagram where people rally around their passions,“ says Chris Thorne, CMO at The Honest Company. “What we’re seeing on Instagram is that people who have taken an action from the platform tend to make a higher value purchase than those from other channels.” In fact, its Instagram ads drive so much action among its community that the company attributes a significant amount of their total conversions to Instagram compared to other channels.

With this increase in performance, we’re rolling out even more action-driving enhancements to link ads. Each of the three new solutions is focused on driving better visibility and interaction for our community while driving better performance for our advertisers.

To guide people to take an action, the call to action button will be highlighted when people show interest on or around an ad—like resting on the ad for four seconds or tapping on the profile name.

When Instagrammers tap into an advertiser’s profile from an ad, a call to action button currently appears at the bottom of the profile. In addition to adding the button to the advertiser’s profile which was implemented in June, the button will now extend to the comments section. Now when Instagrammers open up an ad’s comments they can engage with a business quicker without additional tapping or scrolling.

For video link ads, when people unmute a video they’ll be taken to the destination URL while the video continues to play at the top of the screen. Now people can explore, browse and take action on a landing page while continuing to watch the video. People can also go to full screen or dismiss the video player if they prefer to browse the web page.

These new solutions are rolling out over the next month, and we’ll be testing and optimizing the way they work for both our community and our advertisers. With link ads being optimized for better performance, now is the time for advertisers to take advantage of these enhancements.