Instagram Introduces Partner Program To Help Businesses Market Better On Instagram

Instagram continues to mature as a marketing tool.

Today, the Facebook-owned social network introduced the Instagram Partner Program to help advertisers and businesses use Instagram to reach consumers. It’s a natural next step for a company that several months ago opened its advertising platform to all advertisers. Previously, Instagram had held the ad keys closely to make sure that paid promotional messages didn’t diminish Instagram users’ experiences.

Now, after opening the flood gates, Instagram is doing what parent company Facebook and other digital platforms like Twitter, Pinterest and Google have done — solidified official partnerships with third-party marketing firms to help businesses figure out the most efficient ways to spend their marketing dollars.

The Instagram Partner Program has 40 partners at launch today, divided into three categories:

•  Ad Tech: Advertisers can easily manage ads throughout the planning, buying and optimizing process.
  
• Community Management: Marketers can better interact with and understand the Instagram community.
  
• Content Marketing: Businesses can quickly create, curate and source content.

Businesses have already taken advantage of partners’ tools, according to an Instagram blog post:

In August, House of Blues Entertainment (@fillmorenc) turned to our partners to help sell tickets for an up and coming artist playing at its Charlotte, North Carolina location. Using Instagram’s targeting combined with Instagram Partner CitizenNet’s audience modeling, they targeted residents with similar musical tastes during a 13-day campaign. At the end of the campaign, they saw a 64% higher return on investment than their previous benchmark—inspiring them to extend their advertising efforts to 40+ venues in the US.

In Europe, Instagram Partner Smartly.io worked with Hawkers International, a fashion eyewear eCommerce business, to run carousel ads driving strong results. “Working with Smartly.io, we saw a 77% higher return on ad spend over our link ad campaigns—with a 26% lower cost-per-click and almost half the cost-per-action,” says Axel Ramírez, Lead Advertiser at Hawkers Co. “We’re delighted with the results from this new partnership.”

Here’s the full list of Instagram partners:.

Ad Tech: 4C, Adaptly, adMixt, Adobe, AdParlor, Adphorus, Adsmurai, Ampush, ADTZ, Bidalgo, Bornlogic, Brand Networks, CitizenNet, Esome Advertising, Facelift, Glow Digital Media, Kenshoo, Kinetic Social, MakeMeReach, Nanigans, Septeni Original, Smartly.io, SocialCode, Marin Software, Torchlight, Unified, Wisebirds

Community Management: Conversocial, Expion, Hootsuite, Momentfeed, Spredfast, Sprout Social

Content Marketing: Flashstock, Olapic, ReFuel4, Tongal

Community Management/Content Marketing: Curalate, Percolate

Ad Tech/Community Management: Sprinklr

Ad Tech/Community Management/Content Marketing: Salesforce

About The Author

Martin Beck

Martin Beck is Third Door Media’s Social Media Reporter, covering the latest news for Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. He spent 24 years with the Los Angeles Times, serving as social media and reader engagement editor from 2010-2014. A graduate of UC Irvine and the University of Missouri journalism school, Beck started his career at the Times as a sportswriter and copy editor. Follow Martin on Twitter (@MartinBeck), Facebook and/or Google+.

(Some images used under license from Shutterstock.com.)