Instagram’s code reveals the possibility of boosted posts

We have known for a while the incredible potential Instagam has in generating revenue from ads and Facebook revealed that from their latest quarterly earnings. They introduced sponsored posts which are basically ads that seamlessly integrate with the timeline and it is actually my favourite in app ad integration among the various social networks. This system has become successful thanks to integration with Facebook and from that, Instagram now has over 200,000 advertisers, which is a lot by any measure.

Instagram still has potential to generate even more revenue from the company and its mother company, Facebook seems has plans in order to achieve that. According to TechCrunch, the latest build of the Instagram app has an interesting addition to its code which hints that they will offer a way to boost posts.

The specific build in question (ver. 8.1.0) code was decompiled and here is a screenshot of some of the content which includes that specific inclusion of “boosting posts.”

As you can see, there is the [can_boost_post] option in the cod which is currently under the false state. If activated, it will allow people to boost posts to be seen with a bigger audience,which is exactly what we see on Facebook. On Facebook, Page admins can boost specific posts with specific amounts so that they can obtain a higher engagement thanks to the post being beamed to more Facebook users.

This move also goes well with Instagram’s latest push towards businesses where they want people to place ads to the over 400 million people who have registered with the network. Recently, they added three new additions to the profile that mimic Facebook Pages and adding to the boost post news, expect more ads being pushed to your timeline.