More ads to appear on Instagram, now on ‘Stories’ feature

The company, owned by Menlo Park’s Facebook, said 150 million accounts a day are using Instagram Stories, which made waves for its mimicry of Snapchat Stories.

While people might post carefully filtered photos of their new dogs to Instagram’s regular mobile feed, the Stories feature enables them to showcase a more spontaneous collection of photos and short videos, which disappear after 24 hours — say, a clip of tug of war and images of a dog’s snout and eyes with silly captions and emojis.

Ads will now show up between some Stories, which take up the full phone screen and otherwise seamlessly transition from one account to the next.

Instagram will soon begin with ads from more than 30 companies — including General Motors, Netflix, Airbnb and Capital One — before expanding to all advertisers.

“We’ll watch it closely, but I think we’ll introduce it and over time it will be expected, just like on home feed — you see the sponsored logo and know ads are just a part of the experience,” Quarles said.

When asked about the possibility of selling subscriptions to users who may want to avoid ads and regain the chronological timeline, Quarles said that the company had “certainly looked at it,” but that advertising “really fits the product.”