John JellinekAfter a successful quarter of advertising revenue for Facebook, the company will be looking to have a similar effect on Instagram. An article on Entrepreneur posses the pertinent question of advertising on Instagram and whether it will impact user experience. Since it first hit the mainstream in 2010, Instagram has long been a hip application that doesn’t have the annoyance of advertisements, which could have a direct correlation to how quickly the application continues to grow. In just the past six months alone, Instagram has had 50 million active users. It has also been expanding geographically with over 60% of users coming from outside of the United States.

With the likely introduction of ads to the platform in the next year or so, it will be interesting to see how users react. People believe it won’t be a big of a deal as many are making it out to be. Initially there might be negative reviews, but over time people will likely become use to the advertisements and won’t mind them. It might be a matter of finding the best areas within Instagram for advertisements so they can be the least obtrusive to its users.

With such tremendous user growth on the platform, Instagram will be able to charge brands premium fees and in turn won’t need to drown their users in advertisements in order to hit revenue targets. As director of business operations, Emily White said “there is no immediate pressure to make money.” Instagram can afford to transition tastefully to a platform with advertisements to ease any negative sentiments that might occur to its user base. They are in a unique position where they have a bit of leeway in experimenting with advertisements.