The rise of Stories is clear: people want fast, immersive and fun ways to share photos, videos and text with their friends and family – and Stories offer just that. People use Stories to share and discover content they're interested in for movements as big as Pride and moments as small as the coffee they're drinking. We designed Stories on our platforms to fulfil people's need to interact and share in engaging and playful ways on the vertical screen.

We launched Instagram Stories back in August 2016, and saw how quickly people adopted the format. Every day, 400 million Instagram accounts use Instagram Stories.¹ And the success of Instagram Stories showed us that Stories, and camera-based messaging, are experiences that people are craving. This led to Stories being rolled out in Messenger in 2017, and on Facebook and WhatsApp soon after. Since then, we've seen people embrace Stories across our platforms. There are now over 150 million people using Facebook Stories² and 450 million people using WhatsApp Status every day.³

Businesses have an opportunity to harness the power of Stories to connect with customers where they're already engaged. People use Stories on Instagram to discover and engage with content they care about, and this includes content from businesses. In fact, one third of the most viewed Stories on Instagram are from businesses.⁴ Through ads in Instagram Stories, businesses can promote products, build brand awareness and drive sales in a way that fits seamlessly into their customers' browsing experience.

Businesses are already seeing results using ads in Instagram Stories. For example, Tropicana ran video ads in Instagram Stories for its summertime product promotion campaign, achieving an 18-point lift in ad recall and 15-point lift in purchase intent among males. OpenTable used ads in Instagram Stories to drive online restaurant reservations, resulting in a 33% lower cost per reservation compared to other ad formats. And Overstock ran video ads in Instagram Stories to acquire new customers and increase sales, and generated an 18% higher return on ad spend and a 20% decrease in cost per acquisition.

Soon, you'll also be able to run ads in Stories on Facebook to extend your reach to customers across multiple platforms. And as the formats are similar, you can easily repurpose creative assets to share in Stories across our platforms, maximising your reach to people who are likely to be interested in your offerings.

The consumer shift to Stories is clear, and now is the time for businesses to meet their customers where they're sharing and discovering things they love.

Learn how to connect with customers in Instagram Stories.