A month ago, Instagram announced that its ads were officially rolling out to every marketer in the world after months of build up. The other day, the company discussed new ways for advertisers to drive a wider range of objectives and experience increased flexibility with campaigns.

Do you see Instagram ads as a significant addition to your marketing mix? Discuss.

“By optimizing for reach & frequency, advertisers can manage the number of people they reach with their Instagram ads and how frequently the ads are shown,” Instagram said in a post on its business blog. “To make media planning and buying even easier, advertisers can also control the reach and frequency of campaigns across Instagram and Facebook.”

“In addition, performance advertisers can now optimize delivery of their ads to people who are most likely to take an action on their website—driving more efficient performance on Instagram, or for campaigns running across Facebook and Instagram,” it added. “Our goal is to remove friction and give businesses the most bang for their advertising buck.”

The company says that on average, its carousel campaigns have performed better for ad recall than single photo campaigns. They have driven an additional 2.5 point lift. With that in mind, they’re extending the ability to buy these ads through the self serve interfaces including the Ads API, Power Editor and Ads Manager.

The company recently released a 7-minute Carousel Ad “documentary” looking at how brands utilized the format to execute campaigns:

Industry publication AdWeek expects that Instagram will attract more marketers as a result of opening up the format to self service.

Instagram says that by opening up the way advertisers can buy, businesses of all sizes have more flexible targeting, call-to-action button options, and can customize their offsite links to maximize return.

If you’re thinking of dipping your toes into the Instagram ad waters, you may find this infographic from Bannersnack (via SocialTimes) helpful. It looks at some dos and don’ts and what essentially goes into an effective Instagram as:

Courtesy of: Bannersnack

In September, Facebook revealed that Instagram had surpassed 400 million users. For comparison, Twitter just revealed last week that it has 307 million monthly actives.

Are you using Instagram ads yet? Do you intend to? Let us know in the comments.