Online Advertising
Six placements, six different situations. Run the same creative everywhere and you overpay in five of them.
Instagram is not a single ad surface but a bundle of very different usage situations. The feed is scrolled, stories are tapped, reels are swiped, explore is browsed. The same ad can be excellent in one and useless in another.
| Placement | Format | Attention | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feed | 4:5 | medium, calm | product, offer, trust |
| Stories | 9:16 | high, fleeting | action, deadline, poll |
| Reels | 9:16 | high, entertaining | brand, reach, explanation |
| Explore | 4:5 | low | prospecting, cheap |
| Profile feed | 1:1 | low | supplementary |
| Search results | 4:5 | high, intent | retail with search volume |
The 4:5 ratio beats square in the feed because it occupies more screen height and therefore stays in view longer. Anyone still serving 1:1 is giving away roughly 25 per cent of the area.
In every moving format the opening decides. It is measurable as the three-second hold rate. Above 40 per cent is good; below 20 per cent the creative is the problem, not the audience.
What works in the first three seconds: a person looking into the camera and speaking immediately, with no run-up; the result first and the process afterwards, so the finished bathroom then the building site; a surprising movement or a cut in the first second; a concrete question that concerns the audience.
What does not work: logo animations, drone flights over buildings, slow fades, music without picture.
A large share of plays runs without sound. Without burned-in subtitles a talking video is useless in those cases. The platform's automatic captions are a stopgap; they appear late and are unreliable with technical terms.
Burn subtitles in permanently, in large type, in the middle third of the frame. The bottom fifth is covered by the interface, the top by profile details.
Video is not always superior. In three cases the still beats moving image regularly: with very concrete offers carrying a price, where the message fits in two lines; with products whose appeal lies in detail, such as jewellery or furniture; and with very small budgets, because a good still costs a fraction of a good video.
The carousel is underrated. It compels interaction, delivers several arguments in sequence and suits explanation-heavy services well. Four to six cards is the optimum. The first card must work alone, because many never swipe on.
A proven build: card 1 the problem, card 2 the consequence, card 3 the solution, card 4 the proof, card 5 the next step.
Do not rely on click-through rate. Three other numbers say more: the three-second hold rate for the creative, cost per landing page view for the creative and audience combination, and conversion rate on the landing page for the offer. Those three separate cleanly where a problem actually sits.
Technically yes, commercially no. Automatic cropping regularly cuts off heads or product detail. Two versions, one square and one vertical, are the minimum.
Up to 15 seconds in stories, 30 in feed, 60 in reels. What matters is not the ceiling but that the core message lands in the first three seconds.
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