Instagram Stories will soon get full-screen video ads

If you’re one of the 150-million people who use Instagram’s Stories feature, you’re in for a new surprise this year.

Thanks to the feature’s popularity, the company will soon feed advertising shorts into various users’ Stories. These won’t link to any site or app, but will also be easily skippable thanks to a close button in the clip’s top right corner. The ads will span between five and 15 seconds in length.

The company explained that now seems to be the perfect time to monetise the feature, as around “70% of Instagrammers” follow a business on the network.

Users will soon see advertisements pop up as full screen clips in their Instagram Stories reels

“The momentum for stories from businesses is clear, so today we’re unveiling tools that inform ephemeral interaction between people and businesses—stories insights in Business Tools, and full screen ads in stories,” it adds.

Instagram will start initially with around 30 companies, which includes the likes of Maybelline New York, Nike, Netflix and Qantas.

Instagram, which now plays host to 600-million monthly users and 300-million daily visitors, notes that the feature will be rolling out globally “in the coming weeks”.