Now you can track Instagram Follows from your ads. Where can you find it? And does it matter?
Follow these simple steps to see if you have it…
Do This
1. Within Ads Manager, go to the Columns drop-down menu and click “Customize Columns.”
2. In the search bar, type “follows.”
If you have this, you’ll be able to add a column for Instagram Follows. Then you can see how many Instagram Follows resulted from your ads.
Does It Matter?
Honestly, it’s odd that it’s taken Meta this long to add this metric. Not that it’s particularly important, but it’s also a core action you might be curious about related to engagement with Instagram ads.
If you’re wondering, I’m not aware of any tests to optimize for this metric. But that’s probably for the best anyway. Optimizing for page likes has historically yielded only very low-quality page likes. I wrote this WAY back in 2012, and I can’t say much has changed in this area since then. It’s easy to assume the same would be the case when optimizing for Instagram Follows.
Not only is the quality likely to be bad, but Follows is a vanity metric that means less than ever before. Having more followers doesn’t guarantee more reach. The algorithm now favors the content itself over the size of your audience.
Regardless of what you think of the metric, it’s one more way to measure the impact of your ads. Do what you will with it.
