Instagram ads have come Canada! What do you think?

We all knew it was coming, but today is officially the day. It’s the day that Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, brought ads to Canada.

And the result so far?

I don’t know, I don’t think I mind it.  I mean, OF COURSE, no ads is better than ads. But, if the ads are beautiful and inspire creativity, which to me has always been the point of Instagram, then I’m probably not going to waste a huge amount of time being annoyed by it. Plus, it’s an ad. If I don’t like it, then I just keep scrolling on by.

But this is just day one. So what can we expect. Here’s what we know: So far Instagram has allowed only six companies to use it’s advertising service: Hudson’s Bay, Target Canada, Sport Chek, Air Canada, Mercedes Benz Canada and Travel Alberta.

Of these companies, I’m only following Travel Alberta and interestingly enough, that was the first ad that I saw on my feed this morning. And actually, I thought Hudson’s Bay had long abandoned Instagram? I remember years ago, they use to feature users photos, but I haven’t seen them since. But, what do you know, they do exist.

I’m interested to see how targeting works, because, I like photos like Travel Alberta’s already, does that mean I’ll see them more or less? And I don’t think I’ve ever liked a fashion-related photo, does that mean Hudson Bay will be filling my Instagram feed. (I could write a whole post about how I don’t like the direction of HB’s Instagram feed and that they should be doing things like what companies like Camp Brand Goods and Hershel are doing, but I digress.)

According to Marketing Magazine, the frequency in which we see the ads will depend on how often we use Instagram If you rarely use it, you’ll likely rarely see ads. But “power users” like myself, might see them everyday.

Photo via Marketing Mag

The only other Instagram ad I’ve seen online so far online is for Sport Chek (Unrelated point: Why isn’t it Sport Check?  Like, why did we drop the “c”?)  Interestingly enough, the photo is also of a beautiful lake in Alberta.  So maybe all ads will be just beautiful lakes in Alberta. Lord knows we have enough of them.

So what do you think? Like ’em? Hate ’em? Indifferent? I’m somewhere between like ’em and indifferent.