Are you living in the United States? Do you see a photo or video marked as shown below? If the answer to both these questions is yes, then you are already getting a glance of a sponsored story on the most popular photo-sharing social network – Instagram.

Just as Facebook acquired Instagram, it was evident that an advertising section would be next in the pipeline.

Instagram ads will still be available in beta phase only to a certain set of brands that have made it big in the Instagram community. You’ll be noticing an update from lot of brands that you don’t follow, but it also allows you to control the ads that show up in your feed. Hide a photo or video just by clicking on this icon at the bottom.

This will provide feedback to Instagram to stop showing less interesting ads in your feed. It also promises to show more creative & engaging ads so that users around the globe get inspired & be connected. However, this won’t change the fact that you own your account & hence you will still see the updates from the users whom you follow. This remains constant irrespective of the change that is about to come.

With this in news, the brands related to Fashion industry, Cars, Fast Food, Soft drinks, Travel will be leveraged the most as users are always eager to have a visual treat. For greater engagement, photos or videos need to be appealing to all the users. It will be more important to keep track on the engagement strategy of a brand.

Is Instagram the next twin of Facebook? A question that still needs to be answered.