Instagram, Facing Pressure From Facebook, Is Testing Back-To-Back Ads In Stories (Report)

Instagram is about to get even more ads.

Beginning this week, the platform is running a test with what it told AdWeek is a “small percentage” of users. When those users are scrolling through Instagram’s Stories feature, they will now be served two back-to-back ads from different marketers instead of just one at a time.

The company also told AdWeek that its main goal here is to experiment with whether back-to-back ads will be a smoother experience for its 500 million daily Stories users. (How increasing ads could result in a smoother experience isn’t clear, but Facebook also apparently told AdWeek

that its primary concern with this test is users’ satisfaction, and pleasing advertisers comes in second.)

This test comes at the same time as a new report from The Information that says Instagram’s parent company, Facebook, is putting pressure on it to include more and more ads — something that resulted in Instagram noticeably beginning to work ads into its the ‘Explore’ tab in June.

Overall, from this time last year to now, Facebook has pushed Instagram into doubling the number of ads it runs across its platform.

The report also says that some Facebook execs are concerned Instagram’s success could overwhelm Facebook’s own, and alleges that company executives have had discussions about how Instagram — in return for Facebook acquiring it, incubating it, and helping grow it into the company it is today — should “return the favor” by focusing on directing users back to Facebook.

Whatever happens between the two social giants, users can expect to see more ads across Instagram outside of the back-to-back Stories test, because Facebook told Instagram to increase the amount of ads it runs even more as we head into the end of this year, per The Information.