Facebook execs have been upfront about the fact that at some point, Instagram will include advertising.
The timeline remains a mystery. Based on CEO Mark Zuckerberg's comments during the company's second-quarter earnings call this week, it's not necessarily imminent:
[CEO] Kevin [Systrom] has always been clear that we’re building Instagram to be a business, and we expect that over time, we’re going to generate a lot of profit from it, probably through advertising. Now, that all said, right now, it’s just growing so quickly. I mean, the number that we’ve just said was 130 million monthly actives, [and the] video product is growing really quickly. There are so many directions to expand this in that we think that the right focus for now is to continue just focusing on increasing the footprint of Instagram, and when the right time comes, we’ll think about doing advertising, as well, and I think that’s going to be a really big opportunity.
If you follow a few brands on Instagram, it may already feel like ads populate your feed. However, you may still dread the day when Facebook decides to fully monetize the platform.
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