Will you invest your marketing budget in Instagram?

Instagram is hoping to cement its platform into the ink of media contract schedules in 2015, as its advertising function takes off.

The photo-sharing app presents itself as a glossy online magazine and is popularly associated as a tool for youth and luxury brands, an image it’s plainly attempting to dispel in order to make the platform more commercially lucrative.

Tracy Yaverbaun, its head of brand development for Europe, argued that “It is not just for kids,” highlighting that it’s a place for the over 35’s too.

She adds: “We want to work with everyone. Any brand that has a visual representation of themselves – we would love to see them on Instagram. Even brands with low interest.”

So far in the UK brands such as Burberry, Pepsi, Channel 4 and Cadbury, as well as brands with an older customer-base, such as Mercedes-Benz, Waitrose and John Lewis, have enlisted the platform to meet marketing objectives.

As brands continue to bestow marketing budgets upon the popular app, its commercialisation remains a tactful operation; to feed revenues yet maintain the high creative values and community spirit that drive the apps success.

Acquired by Facebook in 2012 for $1bn, the photo app now boasts 300 million monthly active users globally. According to one source, as many as 11 million active users use the app in the UK alone, pretty impressive data that will surely play on every marketers mins in the coming year.