Can you run Instagram ads without being on Instagram?


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Instagram ads integrate very nicely with the Facebook ad platform. So nicely, you don’t even need an Instagram account to run Instagram ads. All that’s needed is a Facebook account.

Read next: Should I automatically push my promoted Facebook post to Instagram?

Traditionally, in social media, you must create an account on the network you were running an ad. That would lead to discussions over whether charges were even needed and how to we keep brand names across networks intact.

Should we sign up for this account, and what should we do on that network? As marketing expert Mark Schaefer reminds us, with this busy graphic of social networks, it’s virtually impossible to be on every network you could potentially be on.

Read next: How to combine social media accounts when organizations merge

So, if you don’t want to add a company Instagram account, but want to reach people there, pushing a Facebook ad to Instagram is the way to go.

Facebook ads on Instagram

When people on Instagram click on your name on the ad created on Facebook, it’s not necessarily a perfect user experience, but it’s also not terrible. Here’s how that looks from an example I ran across.

Instagram transparently tells you that the advertiser is not on Instagram but that you can check out their Facebook page.

Is it a good idea to run ads on Instagram without an IG account?

Like anything in digital marketing, it always depends on the goal. If a company doesn’t have an organic network goal but is running paid campaigns, especially when they are running them on Facebook, they can conveniently push them to Instagram. So why not make the process easy? Especially when it’s driving results.

Listen next: 456: How to be a results-driven leader

A definite downfall is that you can lose out on people who want to follow you. I’ve tried to follow an advertiser before when I wasn’t ready to buy whatever they were selling, but I wanted to stay connected. So I clicked on their name in the ad in an attempt to follow them. But since there’s no associated account, it’s not possible.

Personally I haven’t seen much success on Instagram campaigns, way less than I have seen on Facebook, but depending on the campaign, it might be worth trying, and if a company doesn’t have an organic Instagram strategy, it might be an easy way to give the network a shot.



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