Facebook is on a huge monetisation drive and now, Instagram users globally, including in India, will see ads within the short-video feature Reels from Friday.
The ads will be full-screen, looping, and up to 30-second long, and will appear in between other clips.
“Reels ads will be full screen and vertical, similar to ads in Stories, and will appear in between individual Reels. As with regular Reels content, these ads will loop and can be up to 30 seconds. People can comment, like, view, save and share Reels ads,” Instagram said in a statement late on Thursday.
Reels ads will appear in the most popular places to access Reels content. This includes the Reels tab, Reels in Stories, Reels in Explore, and Reels in the user feed.
Once a user taps into a reel from Stories, Feed, the Reels Tab or Explore, they will enter a viewer that exclusively shows reels that scroll vertically.
“We see Reels as a great way for people to discover new content on Instagram, and so ads are a natural fit. Brands of all sizes can take advantage of this new creative format in an environment where people are already being entertained,” said Justin Osofsky, Chief Operating Officer, Instagram.
Instagram started testing ads in India, Australia, Brazil, and Germany in April and is now rolling those out globally.
Facebook is also experimenting with a new ad format for Stories called sticker ads.
Meant for influencers, the ads “allow creators to monetize their Facebook Stories with ads that look like stickers and receive a portion of the resulting revenue.”
The brand-created stickers will allow influencers to link to specific products their followers can buy.
Facebook has also announced to start experimenting with ads in its Oculus virtual reality (VR) headsets.
The ad experiment on the Oculus Quest VR system will begin with Blaston from Resolution Games and a couple of other developers over the coming weeks.
Last month, Facebook announced that it is starting to test ads in the Oculus mobile app to give developers a new way to showcase their VR applications.
