Instagram rolls out fullscreen ads on Reels

San Francisco: Starting today, Intagram users will get to see full-screen ads within the short-video feature Reels.

The company announced today it's launching ads in its short-form video platform and TikTok rival, Reels, to businesses and advertisers worldwide. The ads will be up to 30 seconds in length, like Reels themselves, and vertical in format, similar to ads found in Instagram Stories.

With Instagram Reels, you can create short musical video formats like the ones found on TikTok. It also allows you to record and edit 15-30 second video clips.

Also like Reels, the new ads will loop, and people will be able to like, comment on, and save them, the same as other Reels videos.

"Reels ads will be full screen and vertical, similar to ads in Stories, and will appear in between individual Reels." Instagram said

In a statement late on Thursday, Instagram said that as with regular Reels content, these ads will loop and can be up to 30 seconds wherein people can comment, like, view, save and share Reels ads.

Reels ads will appear in the most popular places to access Reels content including the tab, stories, explore and feed of users.

Once a user taps into a reel from Stories, Feed, the Reels Tab or Explore, they will enter a viewer that exclusively shows reels that scroll vertically.

"We see Reels as a great way for people to discover new content on Instagram, and so ads are a natural fit. Brands of all sizes can take advantage of this new creative format in an environment where people are already being entertained," IANS quoted Justin Osofsky, Chief Operating Officer, Instagram as saying.

Instagram started testing ads in India, Australia, Brazil and Germany in April and is now rolling those out globally.

Facebook is also experimenting with a new ad format for Stories called sticker ads.

Meant for influencers, the ads "allow creators to monetise their Facebook Stories with ads that look like stickers and receive a portion of the resulting revenue."

The brand-created stickers will allow influencers to link to specific products their followers can buy.

Facebook has also announced to start experimenting ads in its Oculus virtual reality (VR) headsets.

The ad experiment on Oculus Quest VR system will begin with Blaston from Resolution Games and a couple other developers over the coming weeks.

Last month, Facebook announced that it is starting to test ads in the Oculus mobile app to give developers a new way to showcase their VR applications.