Instagram Ads: A Guide for Shopify Merchants (2026)

Finding new customers is one of the leading challenges for 36% of store owners in their first year of business, according to a 2025 Shopify survey.* That’s where Instagram ads can be a highly valuable tool for businesses: Considering 80% of US adults under 30 use Instagram, the platform is a great place to reach new potential consumers.

Leveraging Instagram ads can help businesses reach new audiences, drive traffic to their stores, and convert browsers into buyers. 

This guide breaks down exactly how Instagram ads work, and provides an eight-step setup using Meta Ads Manager. Jaclyn VanSloten, who runs the marketing firm Femra Consulting, also shares what she’s seeing in 2026 across audience, creative, and placement strategy.

What are Instagram ads?

Instagram ads are paid posts that promote a business, product, or service to a specific audience on Instagram. Common ad formats include Instagram photo ads (still images), Instagram video ads, carousel ads, Instagram Reels ads, Instagram Story ads, and shoppable collection ads. These ads appear in users’ feeds, Stories, Reels, and the Explore page alongside organic content.

The advantages of Instagram advertising include:

• Flexible pricing that lets you set your own budget
• A self-serve ad platform through Meta Ads Manager
• Detailed reporting and audience targeting
• Native shopping formats that link products directly to your store
• Wide US audience reach, as half of all adults and the majority of those under 30 use the platform

How do Instagram ads work?

Instagram ads run through an auction process. You set a budget, choose an audience, and Meta compares your bid against other advertisers targeting the same users. The platform then serves the ads that best balance bid amount, ad quality, and predicted user response.

Every campaign in Ads Manager follows a three-level structure:

• The campaign sets the objective, such as sales or awareness
• The ad set defines the audience, budget, and placements
• The ad is the creative itself

Meta documents the full setup in its guide on ways to advertise on Instagram

There are two main ways to create Instagram ads. The first is to set up a Meta Ads Manager account—the same Ads Manager that powers Facebook page advertising—and build campaigns there. This is the route for advanced audience targeting, A/B testing, and full reporting.

The second way is to “boost” an existing post on the Instagram app—anyone with a Professional account (Creator or Business) can boost. From there, you set a budget and schedule, but you lose the deeper customization Ads Manager offers.

You can boost a post before or after publishing: toggle “Boost post” from the options menu before you hit Share, or boost it later from the post itself (find this button on the bottom right hand corner).

Research competitor ads with the Meta Ad Library

Before building your own campaigns, look at what’s already running. The Meta Ad Library is a free public database of every active ad on Facebook and Instagram, searchable by brand or keyword. Type in a competitor’s name and you’ll see their current ads, the dates they started running, and the placements they’re targeting.

Use it to spot patterns. For example:

• Which creative formats a brand leans on for awareness versus conversion
• How often they refresh creative
• What offers and hooks they test
• Which ads have been live longest

For new advertisers, the Meta Ad Library is a free way to benchmark competitor activity in your category before spending a dollar. To further explore related paid tactics across Meta platforms, the guide to Facebook ad strategies. 

Instagram ad examples

Below, you’ll find three Instagram ad examples worth studying—across photos, videos, and carousels—with notes from Jaclyn VanSloten, who runs the marketing firm Femra Consulting, on what makes them work.

Hulken

The bag brand Hulken sells durable rolling totes built for hauling groceries up stairs and through subways. Their feed ad uses a simple, single-image format.

The ad includes a customer testimonial, the product’s five-star rating, a list of features, and a clear “Shop now” call to action. The creative is a clean still image.

“Awareness will be Reels and Stories—full-screen, immersive, and a little bit more authentic and not as polished. It’s more emotional,” says Jaclyn. “Conversion will be a bit more polished. It will be feed or Carousel and then a clear CTA.”

Jones Road Beauty

The makeup brand Jones Road Beauty splits their paid creative between short videos starring founder and celebrity makeup artist Bobbi Brown and testimonial-style ads from everyday customers. The common thread is an authentic, unpolished feel. “Their paid ads often look identical to their organic content,” says Jaclyn.

In this Reels ad, Bobbi appears in an organic-style demo of the brand’s Miracle Balm—one of many short videos the brand runs across Reels and Stories. Other ads in rotation feature customers using products in the same relaxed approach, a pattern the brand’s CMO Cody Plofker credited with helping triple revenue in the brand’s first year.

Our Place

The brand Our Place sells visually aesthetic, high-end cookware and kitchenware. Jaclyn says their paid social uses a “mix of creator integrations, influencers, and high-end photography.”

In this ad, Our Place styles its non-toxic air fryer and countertop oven in a magazine-quality shot. The butter-yellow oven echoes the warm tones of the baked goods and CTA banners.

“They are one of the few direct-to-consumer brands where high-production ads still convert, because the aesthetic is core to the product,” Jaclyn says.

How much do Instagram ads cost?

Instagram ad costs are bid-driven and vary widely by audience, industry, season, and campaign objective. Photo ads and video ads can carry very different costs even when targeting the same audience.

According to marketing agency Tinuiti’s Q1 2026 Digital Ads Benchmark Report, Instagram cost per 1,000 impressions (CPMs) declined 3% year over year in Q1 2026—the first decline since 2023—driven by the rise of lower-cost Reels inventory.

For live US benchmarks by objective, social media marketing platform Bïrch publishes weekly data drawn from hundreds of millions of dollars in ad spend. A few rough plan-around ranges for Instagram ads:

• CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) typically runs in the high single-digits to low double-digits for US audiences, but can climb higher for lead generation campaigns in competitive months.
• CPC (cost per click) commonly sits between 50¢ and $2 for traffic and engagement objectives.
• Reels generally carry lower CPM than Feed and Stories, per Tinuiti—useful to know when planning placement mix.

For current monthly figures by objective, including CPCs for video views and brand awareness campaigns, check Bïrch’s Instagram advertising costs dashboard.

Product price matters, too. If you sell a $1,500 item, you can afford to spend more to acquire a customer than if you sell a $50 one. Plan around two numbers: total campaign budget and target cost per result.

Types of Instagram ads

• Story ads
• Feed ads
• Reels ads
• Carousel ads
• Collection and Shopping ads
• Explore ads

Instagram offers several ad placements and ad formats, each with its own behavior and best use case. The mix runs across static images, short videos, longer vertical videos, and multi-card carousels. 

As for which format is best, it’s worth noting that their efficacy on the platform has shifted over time. Reels ads now account for 33% of all Instagram ad impressions, an all-time high, according to Tinuiti. Feed has dropped to 26%, and Story ads now generate more impressions than Feed.

Story ads

Story ads are the full-screen vertical 9:16 ads that appear between users’ organic Stories. They run for up to 60 seconds as video ads (Meta auto-segments longer videos into multiple cards). “For brand awareness, Story ads and Reels ads are the gold standard,” says Jaclyn. “Those two are really big for brand awareness and capturing attention, getting word out to a broad audience. And they’re very immersive.” 

In fact, Instagram Story ads sit second only to Reels in impression share on Instagram today, per Tinuiti. For a deeper format-specific breakdown, see the guide to Instagram Story ads.

A Story ad takes up the full screen when it appears. When using this format, it’s important to keep key visuals and copy inside the safe zone—the middle 65% of the canvas, or roughly pixels 250 to 1248 on a 1080 by 1920 frame. Anything outside that zone risks being covered by a profile icon at the top or the CTA button and caption overlay at the bottom.

Instagram Story ads can use either photos or videos. For creative direction, see Shopify’s roundup of Instagram Story ideas.

Here’s an example of a Story ad from denim brand Oliver Logan, which introduces its low-rise jeans with a casual model shot and a “Shop now” link.

Feed ads

Feed ads sit between organic posts in users’ main Instagram feeds. They can take the form of photo ads, video ads, or carousel ads with multiple images or short videos—and brands can tag products to make them shoppable.

If you run a Shopify store, you can connect it with Instagram Shopping to sync your product catalog automatically. The Facebook & Instagram app for Shopify connects the two and unlocks the option for selling on Instagram directly.

Common Feed ad aspect ratios are 1:1 square format (1080 by 1080) and 4:5 portrait (1080 by 1350). The 4:5 format claims more vertical real estate on mobile.

Use Feed ads when you want to drive a specific action—a click, a purchase, or a sign-up.

Reels ads

Reels ads are full-screen vertical videos that appear between organic Reels. Users can like, comment, save, and share these short videos just like other videos, and the format has become Instagram’s largest source of ad impressions. “Reels ads are for brand awareness and reach,” Jaclyn says. “This is what we do, here’s who we are, this is what we’re about.”

They’re also cost-efficient when produced well. According to Meta, Reels videos built in 9:16 with audio and key creative inside the safe zone delivered a 34.5% lower cost per result than image ads on Reels in Meta’s own split tests. Meta’s three best practices for Reels videos: keep the aspect ratio at 9:16/1080 by 1920 resolution, add audio, and keep important messages in the upper 65% of the frame. For more on producing Instagram video content, see Shopify’s full guide.

Here’s a Reels ad from Poplight, a brand that sells renter-friendly adhesive light fixtures. The ad shows how the product is installed.

Carousel ads

Carousel ads display up to 10 swipeable cards in a single ad unit, each with its own image, video, headline, and link. They can showcase multiple products in one ad, walk through a how-to, tell a longer story, or break down product features. Carousel ads can mix static images with short videos in the same unit, and they’re found inside the Instagram feed and home feed.

Carousel ads also unlock dynamic product ads, which are catalog-driven ads that automatically pull multiple products from your Shopify store and present a curated selection to users. You build the template once, then Meta personalizes product choices based on the viewers’ browsing history, cart activity, or interests. Dynamic product ads are commonly used for retargeting existing customers who’ve browsed but not bought.

Use carousel ads when you want a single ad to carry more than one message—new collection drops, before-and-after sequences, or curated product sets.

Here’s a carousel from rug brand Revival Rugs, which showcases multiple shoppable rug photos in a single ad.

“When we get more into traffic and conversions, that’s where I start using some of the feed ads, like the carousel ads where there are multiple cards that you can swipe through, or the shopping ads collection that are more for product discovery,” says Jaclyn. “Those are going to be a little bit lower-funnel.”

Collection and Shopping ads

Collection ads pair a hero image or video with a grid of shoppable products underneath. When a user taps, the ad opens into a full-screen Instant Experience where they can shop the full collection directly, without leaving Instagram. Shopping ads can take similar formats and are designed to drive users to purchase products through tappable links.

For Shopify merchants, Collection ads and Shopping ads connect directly to your product catalog through the Facebook & Instagram by Meta sales channel. Products, prices, and availability sync automatically, so the ad reflects what’s in stock. 

Common use cases for Collection ads include product discovery, retargeting, and seasonal collections for stores with deep catalogs.

Explore ads

Explore ads appear on Instagram’s Explore tab, where users browse recommended content from accounts they don’t follow.

“Those are really great for brand awareness and reach because people are exploring—they’re really open-minded to new things,” says Jaclyn.

There are two types of Explore ads:

• Explore home ads. Square tiles that appear directly in the Explore grid.
• Explore feed ads. Ads that show up in the Explore feed, after users tap on a post and start scrolling.

Here’s an Explore home ad from skin care brand Prequel that opens into a full video ad when tapped.

As for how an Explore feed ad appears, here’s an example from clothing brand Deiji Studios promoting a Black Friday sale.

Best practices for Instagram ad creative

• Hook in the first 3 seconds
• Outline your objective
• Stay consistent and embrace the organic feel
• Write engaging and clear ad copy
• Monitor ad fatigue
• Use Partnership Ads with creators

To improve Instagram ad creative, there are a few best practices to follow, according to Jaclyn’s recommendations and Meta’s published platform guidance. For broader context, see Shopify’s guide to Instagram marketing.

Hook in the first 3 seconds

Grabbing a user’s attention quickly is key.

“Hook early, within the first two to three seconds. Especially for the full-screen formats like Reels and Stories,” Jaclyn says. The hook can be a bold visual, a question, a pattern interrupt, or a surprising claim—test several. She also recommends keeping videos short and engaging—no more than 15 to 30 seconds.

Here’s an example from healthy soda brand Poppi announcing a holiday giveaway. The opening shot of festive-colored cans draws in the viewer before any text lands.

Outline your objective

Awareness videos lean longer and more emotional; conversion videos cut to the offer fast.

“Awareness is going to be brand storytelling—the fun, feel-good, emotional creative,” says Jaclyn. “Whereas conversion formats are going to be what the product is, your offer, what the benefit is—harder-hitting messages.”

Pick the objective in Meta Ads Manager first, and let it shape the creative.

Stay consistent and embrace the organic feel

Jaclyn recommends ensuring brand consistency across your ad placements.

“Regardless of if you’re running Reels, Stories, or carousels, you want a similar look and feel,” she says.

Use the same brand colors, typography, and brand voice in every placement. For the organic feel, resist over-polishing—particularly on Reels and Stories. 

“Don’t make it look overtly like an ad,” Jaclyn says. See how to use Instagram Reels for marketing and Shopify’s Instagram content ideas for organic patterns to draw from.

Write engaging and clear ad copy

Across formats, be sure to:

• Open with a hook, like a question, bold claim, or surprising fact
• Focus on one key message
• Use active language aimed at your audience’s pain points or desires
• Minimize power words like “limited” or “exclusive”
• Include one clear call-to-action button

For longer ad captions, pair these tips with Shopify’s guide to writing Instagram captions that hold attention.

CTA wording depends on the objective. 

“For conversion-oriented placements, you want either ‘Shop now’ or ‘Learn more,’” Jaclyn says. “Whereas for Reels and Stories, it would be more like ‘Discover.’” 

Use native interactive elements where they fit, like carousel swipes, Story polls, tappable shopping cards. Here’s a conversion-oriented ad from supplement brand Cymbiotika. The 30%-off hook lands in bold, “Last chance” creates urgency, and the CTA drives to checkout.

Monitor ad fatigue

Jaclyn warns that ads wear out fast on social media.

“If you have something that was doing really well three to four months ago, it’s probably ‘out’ now,” she says. “Make sure you have the funds to refresh creative on a fairly regular basis if you start seeing performance dropping.”

Watch frequency and CTR. Meta shows a “Creative fatigue” warning in Ads Manager when frequency exceeds 2.5 for cold audiences in a seven-day window—a reasonable trigger to refresh with new hooks, new videos, or new product angles.

Use Partnership Ads with creators

Partnership Ads (rebranded from Branded Content Ads by Meta in 2023) let brands amplify creator content as paid ads that run under the creator’s handle, with the Paid Partnership label. The brand gets the targeting, budget, and measurement of a normal ad campaign; the creator’s followers see the post in their feed with the paid-partnership disclosure. The format is one way to scale user generated content as paid media.

This can be particularly effective because, according to Meta, 40% of people use creator recommendations on Instagram when shopping.

Commission original photos or videos from a creator, or boost an existing creator post. Both approaches run through Meta Ads Manager and require the creator to grant ad permissions via an ad code or Meta’s Creator Marketplace.

For instance, here’s a Partnership Ad from skin care brand OneSkin with creator Jennifer Latch.

Beyond paid partnerships, build user-generated content (UGC) by monitoring mentions and tags, creating a branded hashtag, and reposting customer content. Always ask permission first.

How to create Instagram ads with Ads Manager

• Link your Instagram to your Facebook
• Create an Instagram ad campaign
• Choose your campaign objective
• Identify your ad budget and schedule
• Define your target audience
• Design your ads and create an Instagram ad set
• Choose your Instagram ad placements and publish
• Analyze and optimize your Instagram ads

There are eight steps to get a campaign live across Instagram’s ad placements.

Before you start, make sure your Instagram bio links to your store, and consider getting your professional account verified on Instagram. For broader Instagram fundamentals, see how to use Instagram for business.

1. Link your Instagram to your Facebook

To use Meta Ads Manager, you need a Facebook business page with your Instagram profile connected to it. Once linked, you’ll be able to schedule Instagram posts and create ads from the same Meta Business Suite dashboard.

• Go to Settings on your Facebook page.
• Select Linked accounts.
• Select Instagram.
• Select Connect account (your Instagram account must be in Professional mode).
• Follow the prompts to finish the connection.

2. Create an Instagram ad campaign

Now that your accounts are linked, you can create ads inside Ads Manager. To start, select + Create in the upper left. Ad campaigns in Meta Ads Manager are organized in three layers: campaign, ad set, and ad.

3. Choose your campaign objective

Every campaign starts with an objective. This determines how Meta delivers and optimizes your ads, which formats are available, and which KPIs Ads Manager surfaces by default.

“Goals really impact the entire campaign,” says Jaclyn. “When I think about a goal, I think about what the creative should look like as well as what the call to action should be, and what the key performance indicators (KPIs) should be, and also who the audience is. I think it’s really important to be thoughtful about the goal that you’re choosing.”

The six available objectives for ad campaigns are:

• Awareness. Increase brand awareness with as many relevant people as possible.
• Traffic. Drive clicks to your website or landing page.
• App promotion. Drive app installs.
• Engagement. Get likes, comments, shares, follows, or keep your audience engaged.
• Leads. Collect email addresses or other lead data for sign-ups.
• Sales. Drive conversions and purchases.

Shoppable ad formats aren’t available for awareness, app promotion, or engagement objectives.

4. Identify your ad budget and schedule

Decide whether to use Meta’s Advantage+ campaign budget tool, which utilizes AI to allocate spend across placements automatically. Then set your total budget and timing—daily or lifetime, with optional dayparting to spend more during peak periods (holidays, sale events, product launches). For organic timing benchmarks that can inform paid scheduling, see Shopify’s guides on the best time to post on Instagram and how the Instagram algorithm works.

If you want to compare two creative or audience approaches in parallel, you can set up A/B testing from within Ads Manager. You’ll get side-by-side results across metrics, like cost per three-second video play or cost per add-to-cart.

“Testing creative is a big thing,” says Jaclyn. “Test different hooks, images, videos, and CTAs. Learn what works, and then double down on that.”

Pace your spending, too. “I do find sometimes people just throw a bunch of money and then are done,” Jaclyn says. “In the initial phases, you want to be testing and learning, so scaling gradually and putting more money at the placements that are performing well.”

5. Define your target audience

Instagram’s targeting tools let you pick the demographic traits, interests, behaviors, and locations of the people who’ll see your ad. 

“Instagram touts that the best practice is to create a broad audience first, and then let the algorithm optimize,” Jaclyn says. “If you’re a new first-time business, that’s a fine strategy, because then you can learn about who your audience is.”

For an established business that already knows who it wants to reach, narrow targeting by demographic and interest is an option. For retargeting and lookalike audiences, you’ll need to install Meta Pixel first.

Set up Meta Pixel

Meta Pixel is a snippet of tracking code that sits on your Shopify store and reports user actions back to Meta—page views, add to carts, purchases on the landing page. With it installed, you can build a custom audience of past visitors, retarget previous shoppers, and create lookalike audiences based on customer lists or website visitors. You can set it up through the Facebook & Instagram by Meta sales channel in your Shopify admin, which handles the connection without code.

Consider Shopify Audiences

Shopify Plus merchants on Basic plans and above can also tap into Shopify Audiences, which uses commerce data from across the Shopify network to build audience lists for use in Meta Ads Manager and other ad platforms. Shopify designed it to help lower acquisition cost on prospecting campaigns.

The target audience also shifts with objective. “If I have an awareness campaign, I’m usually casting a broader audience net—maybe people who aren’t familiar with the brand,” Jaclyn says. “Whereas for conversion or shopping campaigns—lower-funnel—I’m going to have a narrower audience, and I’m going to be using tactics like retargeting to make sure to re-engage audiences.”

6. Design your ads and create an Instagram ad set

Upload your creative. The requirements vary by ad format: a carousel needs multiple cards, a Reels ad needs a 9:16 vertical video, a Feed ad needs a single strong image or video. Plan for placement: photos and short videos for Feed and carousel; vertical videos for Reels and Stories.

Meta Ads Manager previews each ad as it will appear on Instagram, and ad templates can help align your creative—whether still images or videos—with Meta’s best practices for each ad format.

Here’s a Reels ad template inside Ads Manager, built for 9:16 vertical videos:

7. Choose your Instagram ad placements and publish

Pick where on Instagram your ads will appear. As Jaclyn’s commentary above suggests, awareness campaigns commonly run on Reels and Stories, while conversion campaigns lean on shoppable Feed and carousel ads. If you run ads across multiple placements, Meta’s auto-placement option will allocate budget based on Ads Manager’s optimization signals.

Jaclyn recommends running a variety of different placements at the get-go—Feeds, Stories, and Reels—and then seeing what performs well. “[This] is usually a good place to start if you’re a newer brand.”

When you’re ready, select Publish in the lower right.

8. Analyze and optimize your Instagram ads

Once a campaign is live, the work shifts to learning what’s performing and putting more money behind it. In Ads Manager, you can edit ads, set up testing, adjust targeting, view Instagram ad performance analytics, and—for lower-funnel campaigns—use ad sequencing to deliver multiple ads to the same audience in a deliberate order.

“Leverage remarketing and sequential messaging, so reaching people multiple times to really push your message forward,” says Jaclyn. “Especially for lower-funnel campaigns.”

The metrics worth tracking depend on objective:

• Awareness: CPM, reach, frequency, ad recall lift, brand metrics.
• Traffic: CPC, CTR, landing page views.
• Engagement: Engagement rate, cost per engagement.
• Leads: Cost per lead, lead volume.
• Sales: Return on ad spend (ROAS), cost per purchase, conversion rate.

“When we think about KPIs, awareness will be CPM, reach, ad recall, lift, and brand metrics,” says Jaclyn. “Whereas conversion is going to be your cost per action and your return on ad spend.”

For conversion campaigns, install Meta’s Conversions API to track purchases server-side. It complements the pixel and is more resilient to browser tracking restrictions. You can enable it from your Shopify admin by selecting Enhanced from the Meta data-sharing settings.

Finally, let paid performance feed back into organic. “If you see things that perform really well in paid, use that information to help with your organic content,” says Jaclyn. Native Instagram Insights shows engagement and reach for organic posts, which can be cross-referenced with Ads Manager creative performance.

*Based on a 2025 survey of 500 Shopify merchants conducted in English across Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United States. Respondents were established merchants with two or more years on the platform. Results reflect the experiences of this specific sample and may not be representative of all merchants.