Paid Advertising
Instagram Ads
Same buying platform as Facebook, different audience behaviour, and creative that does not transfer. That last part is the whole service.
Instagram Ads are bought through the same Meta Ads Manager as Facebook, so the difference is entirely placement and creative. The Nexclick builds assets for Reels, Stories and feed individually, because a Facebook image cropped into a vertical placement is the commonest reason Instagram underperforms.
Is this you?
What usually prompts the call
- Your Instagram placements spend as much as Facebook and convert far worse.
- Every asset is a landscape image with the logo cropped off the edge.
- Reels placements are switched on and nothing has been made for them.
- You sell products and have never configured shopping tags.
What we do
The actual deliverables
Things that appear on an invoice, not adjectives.
- Build for each placement separately
- Feed, Stories and Reels are three formats with different aspect ratios, durations, safe zones and audience expectations. Automatic placements fed one asset serves all three of them badly.
- Design around the safe zones
- Stories and Reels overlay interface elements top and bottom. Text placed there is simply invisible, and it is the single most common production error we find in inherited accounts.
- Make Reels creative that looks native
- Vertical, quick, sound-designed but legible muted, paced like organic content. An advert that announces itself as an advert is scrolled past in under a second on this surface.
- Use creator content where it fits
- Partnership ads running from a creator’s own handle consistently outperform brand-account creative here, and the setup is considerably more straightforward than most brands assume.
- Configure shopping tags and the catalogue
- Where you sell products, tagged posts and catalogue-driven placements do work a static ad cannot. It requires the commerce catalogue to be accurate first, in the same way Shopping does.
- Test the hook separately from the body
- The first second decides the outcome on Reels. Several openings against one common body is a cheaper and faster test than producing several complete assets and comparing them.
- Report at placement level
- Broken out by placement rather than by campaign, so it becomes visible when Reels is quietly subsidising feed, or the reverse. Aggregate reporting hides which surface actually pays.
- Keep the profile credible
- Cold traffic checks the profile before acting. An advert pointing at an account with three posts from last year loses conversions that the campaign then gets blamed for.
Comparison
What works on each Instagram placement, and what fails
The same asset performs completely differently across these surfaces. The last column is where most budget is lost, and every entry in it is a production decision rather than a targeting one.
| Placement | What works | What fails |
|---|---|---|
| Feed | Square or 4:5, strong first frame, product clear | Landscape images, which occupy half the available screen |
| Stories | Full-screen vertical, one message, tappable sticker | Text near the top or bottom, hidden behind the interface |
| Reels | Native pacing, hook in the first second, burned-in captions | Anything that looks like a television advert |
| Explore | Visually striking, comprehensible without context | Copy-led creative that needs a caption to make sense |
| Partnership ads | The creator’s own voice, framing and pacing | A brand-supplied script the creator would never say |
| Shopping tags | Accurate catalogue, correct price and stock | Tags pointing at an out-of-stock or mispriced product |
| Carousel | A sequence with an actual reason to swipe | Six unrelated products in no particular order |
| One asset, all placements | Nothing — it is a fallback, not a strategy | Auto-cropping that removes the logo and half the text |
How it works
Step by step, with timeframes
Timeframes are typical rather than guaranteed, and they assume we get account access and approvals when we ask.
- 01Week 1
Placement and creative audit
Which placements are enabled, what has actually been made for each, and where assets are being auto-cropped into uselessness.
- 02Week 1–3
Production
Vertical-native assets built per placement, safe zones respected, captions burned in rather than left to platform auto-captioning.
- 03Week 3–4
Launch and hook testing
Live with several openings tested against a common body, and placement-level reporting configured from the first day rather than added later.
- 04Ongoing, monthly
Iterate
New concepts each month, winners scaled, and creator partnerships added where the numbers justify the coordination.
What you get
Reporting and ownership
- Assets built for each placement rather than one file auto-cropped into three.
- Safe zones respected, so nothing important sits behind the interface.
- Placement-level reporting, so you can see which surface actually pays for itself.
- Shopping tags and the commerce catalogue configured where you sell products.
- Creator partnership ads set up where the numbers justify them.
Tools and platforms
- Meta Ads Manager with placement-level breakdown
- Instagram partnership ads and creator authorisation
- Commerce catalogue and shopping tags
- Vertical video production and editing
- Meta Conversions API
Timeline
How long this actually takes
Three to four weeks including production, then monthly creative cycles. Instagram creative decays faster than Facebook creative, particularly on Reels, so a production pipeline matters more here than in any paid channel except TikTok. One honest note about scope. Instagram and Facebook are bought in the same Ads Manager, which means this is not a separate account or a separate budget — it is a placement and creative discipline inside Meta advertising. If you want both surfaces run properly, the sensible purchase is Meta advertising with Instagram-native production included, rather than two engagements that would share a campaign structure anyway.
Pricing model
Project, then retainer
Usually part of a Meta retainer rather than a separate one, with vertical creative production quoted by volume. Available alone where Instagram genuinely is the only placement you run.
Questions
Instagram Ads questions
Is Instagram advertising separate from Facebook advertising?
Not as a purchase. Both are bought in Meta Ads Manager, often within the same campaign. What is genuinely separate is the creative — Instagram placements need vertical-native assets, and treating the two as one production job is why Instagram usually shows the worse numbers of the pair.
What are safe zones and why do they matter?
The regions at the top and bottom of Stories and Reels where the platform overlays its own interface — profile details, captions, the call to action. Anything you place there is covered. Text sitting under an interface element is invisible to every viewer, and nobody sees it in the preview.
Should we run Reels ads?
If you can produce for them, yes — Reels carries the most reach on the platform at present. If you cannot produce vertical, fast-paced, natively-styled video, leave the placement off rather than filling it with a cropped feed asset that will underperform and drag the campaign average down.
Do partnership ads work better than brand ads?
Generally yes, and by a clear margin. Running from a creator’s handle carries their credibility and their comment history, and it reads as content rather than advertising. The catch is coordination — you need the creator’s authorisation and a usage rights agreement in the contract from the start.
Does our organic Instagram profile affect ad performance?
Yes, more than most brands expect. Cold traffic taps the profile before acting, and an account that was last posted to in autumn signals a business that may not still exist. It costs conversions the campaign gets blamed for, and a minimal maintained presence fixes it.
Can we reuse our Facebook creative on Instagram?
Feed placements can share a square or 4:5 asset. Stories and Reels cannot — a cropped landscape file loses the logo, the text, or both, and looks visibly wrong on a surface where everything else is native. It is the cheapest available fix and the one most often skipped.
Do we need shopping tags if we already run catalogue ads?
They serve different moments. Catalogue ads push products at people; shopping tags let somebody who is already looking at your content buy without leaving. Both draw on the same feed, so once the catalogue is accurate, enabling tags is a small job with no additional media cost.
Last reviewed 28 July 2026.
Tell us what you are trying to fix
A 20-minute call, no pitch deck. The Nexclick will tell you what we would do, roughly what it costs, and whether we are the right people for it.