Instagram to Open Its Photo Feed to Ads

Instagram is cranking up its money machine, and that means a lot more ads in your photo feed. Facebook, which bought Instagram in 2012, has kept the mobile photo-sharing service mostly free of advertising, allowing only a handful of big brands to put a few carefully drafted commercial messages on the service. But the company announced plans to open the Instagram feed to all advertisers, from the local tattoo parlor to global food makers. Marketers will be able to target ads to the service’s 300 million users by interest, age, gender and other factors, just as they can on Facebook. Instagram will also begin testing a type of ad that allows viewers to click on a link to buy a product or install an app that is advertised. The commercialization of Instagram, while sure to disappoint some users, was probably inevitable.