When we launched advertising for all businesses on the platform last September, we introduced the ability to click offsite from Instagram with action-driving adverts. To help educate the community on the new functionality, we implemented an image overlay after a user taps once on a performance-based advert. Similar to organic content where a single tap on a photo displays additional information, such as a user tag on photo posts or enabling sound on video posts, a single tap on adverts can help consumers better understand what action they're supposed to take from the advert. For advertisers, the overlay confirms a user's intent to perform an offsite action, ensuring that high-quality traffic is going to your website, mobile app or the app store.

Earlier this month, we made changes to the overlay to help bring richer content to the Instagram community and increase advertiser performance across objectives. Previously, the overlay offered a more generic Go to Website or Go to App Store message, depending on the objective. With the update, the overlay now pulls in your business's Facebook Page name as well as the display or destination website URL you selected when setting up your advert. For mobile app installs, a View in App Store message will appear for iOS adverts and a View in Play Store message will appear for Android adverts. To make sure that quality customers take action from your adverts, we charge advertisers based on the click on the overlay, not the initial tap.

Consumers can take action on your adverts in one of two ways: either by tapping once on the advert's photo to reveal the overlay or by clicking on the call-to-action button. The majority of clicks occur on the call-to-action button you select, which will either take users directly to your website or app or deep-link them directly into your app experience.

Businesses of all sizes are seeing the benefits of running adverts that drive action on Instagram. To make its Star Wars character footwear come to life, Stance Socks, created a series of photo adverts optimised for website conversions. By adding a "Shop Now" button to its adverts, Stance Socks gave consumers a clear action to take. Then, with the help of the image overlay detailing the company's URL, consumers understood exactly where the Call to Action would lead them. At the end of its campaign, Stance Socks saw an 80% increase in engagement and a 36% increase in return on advertising spend compared to other marketing channels.

If you're running action-based adverts, the updated overlay helps drive valuable traffic to your website or app. The overlay is automatically included on all photo and carousel adverts, so there's no action needed to include the overlay in your adverts. You can go into Adverts Manager and manually edit your campaigns to include a specific display URL. If there's no display URL listed, it will automatically default to the advert's destination URL.