In the last couple of weeks, both Instagram and Snapchat made significant strides toward the profitability and monetization of their businesses. Instagram came out publicly and announced a beta version of sponsored ads in the Instagram feed in this short blog post, but Snapchat only admits that their new "Stories" and cross-promoted ads with L.A. bands are a "little experiment." This is a major trend as more and more social networks and applications are introducing advertising. It was only May 2012 when Tumblr also launched their first "sponsored products."

This has been the trend for almost all social networks. They start out with a basic platform and once they cross a threshold of users, investors and stakeholders push the company to monetize the business and start to return a profit. What was significant from these recent announcements and trends, though, for social media marketing and social advertising?

1. Diversity in Social Platforms
If you didn’t believe it before, Instagram and Snapchat are sticking around. The shift toward monetization proves that. The number of channels brands have to connect with their customers is constantly growing and evolving. Brands have already started using corporate Instagram feeds, but now they will be able to deliver relevant, targeted posts to untapped users as well. As more and more social networks launch platforms for “sponsored” posts and partners, more and more avenues to reach your customers exist. More than ever, brands need to reach their customers where they are. The growth in the social space allows for brands to focus their efforts where they will be most effective. This ultimately leads to better segmentation, targeting, and positioning that is relevant to each individual customer.

2. Diversity in Social Ads
It is significant to note that it was only a little over three months ago when Instagram first launched videos. It is likely that since the Facebook acquisition, Instagram has been pressured to show a return on Facebook and its stockholder's $1B investment. Releasing sponsored posts after launching Instagram videos, though, will now bring ad revenue from both sponsored images and videos. The ability to advertise with video on Instagram will hopefully allow for much more creative and relevant sponsored posts in the Instagram feed. In the past couple of years, the diversity in social advertisements has grown significantly. Brands are being given more and more options to reach new markets and customers in new and creative ways.

In contrast to all of this, though, on the same day as Instagram’s announcement, Twitter noted in its SEC Form S-1 filings that they do not currently plan to place ads on Vine. Vine has 40 million users compared to Instagram's 150 million and Twitter is still a private company for the time being. It will be interesting how Vine’s resistance to ads will affect its popularity and growing adoption.

3. Acquisition Through Social Media
This continues to prove that you can sell through social media. Jason Falls presented a whole breakout session at Connections 2013 on How to Acquire New Audiences Through Social Media. Social media allows you to provide content that makes consumers smarter and gives them something of value first, before trying to sell them. Social ads have become just one more acquisition avenue through social media, but they also help to validate the importance social media has in an organization’s marketing efforts.

4. The Social Ad Market is Still Growing Tremendously
Social advertising only represents 1-10% of most advertisers’ budgets. As more and more channels open their platforms to sponsored posts and advertising, social advertising will only continue to grow and evolve.

As social networks grow up, it is inevitable that they move toward becoming a profitable business. Most freemium business models use advertisements and sponsors as that means of monetization, but a few have started to try and reinvent that business model. App.net has been one of the most popular to introduce a tiered pricing model based on the number of people you follow. What are your reactions to the recent introduction of Instagram sponsored posts and other social networks’ monetization efforts? Will this hinder the user experience on these platforms? Do you have any other ideas for monetization in these business models beyond advertisements?