Instagram influencers you don’t follow promoting brands you’ve never even heard of may start appearing in your feed, after the platform launched ‘Branded Content Ads on Instagram’.

Instagram made the announcement overnight, citing brands wanting to incorporate branded content posts into advertising strategies as “one of the biggest requests”.

“With branded content ads, businesses have an opportunity to tell their brand stories through creators’ voices, reach new audiences and measure impact,” Instagram said in a statement.

“Using the tools available on the Facebook ads platform, businesses can reach targeted audiences beyond the people who follow the brand and creator accounts.”

This also means brands can use Facebook’s ads platform to get analytics on branded posts.

Branded Content Ads will be live on the platform as of today.

It’s a move that allows both brands and influencers to significantly increase their reach on the platform, as a creator’s sponsored post will reach an audience beyond their followers.

Like any other ad on Instagram, people will see “paid partnership with” along with the brand name when the branded content ads appear in feeds and stories.

Influencers must first enable their business partners to promote their posts as an ad to get started with Branded Content Ads on Instagram.