Since Facebook needs to increase its revenue per user in order to justify its share price, advertisements on Instagram have become the most likely and probable possibility. 

Earlier this week, Facebook sent out an email to its users introducing its new terms of service. The new terms take away the right to vote on changes to Facebook, including changes to its privacy policy. They also mean that the social network is removing the digital walls which separate a user’s personal information on Facebook from his or her data on Instagram. Before these changes, user data was “siloed,” meaning that marketers on Facebook didn’t have access to a user’s Instagram data and vice-versa. The new data pool will enable Facebook to know everything from your household income to your buying preferences. This information is acquired from Instagram’s “geolocation” tool. The tool imbeds each Instagram photo with an exact latitude and longitude stamp. It does this automatically after a user says “yes” to the inevitable question, “Can Instagram use your location?”

Mobile advertisements are generally ineffective due to their small size. But Instagram ads would likely consist of a user-specific ad every 10th post. Just like a regular Instagram photo, the image would be large and unavoidable. According to QZ, experts claim that this could be the first step to advertising models for mobile apps that actually work.

[Via QZ]

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Claudia McNeilly writes for the Toronto Standard. You can follow her on twitter at @claudiamcneilly

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