• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, May 4, 2016

Of course Instagram just added video to its carousel ad format. Native video ads are now the secret to any social network’s success.

Why? Well, as with other native formats, platforms and their brand partners are finally learning to work within the boundaries of what consumers actually want.

What exactly is that? First and foremost, people want control of their media experience. That means not making them sit through a pre-roll video before letting them watch whatever they wanted to watch in the first place. To that, most users say, “Buzz off!”

On the other hand, give users the option to thumb through some video ads -- just as they thumb through everything else these days -- and many more will say, “Hey, why not?”

Likewise, virtually kidnapping consumers by taking them to a separate brand page was never going to earn their affection. Rather, platforms and their partners are learning to let users go where they want, and tempt them with enticing alternatives.

After freely thumbing through a few pictures and videos of the new Mini Cooper on Instagram, people are far more likely to have some fun at Miniusa.com.

Remarkably, Instagram only recently began offering more sophisticated targeting capabilities to advertisers. Last summer, its ad technology finally started leveraging Facebook’s ads infrastructure -- something brands had long asked for.

Now, Instagram’s global mobile ad revenues are expected to reach $2.81 billion -- or about 10% of Facebook's global ad revenues -- by 2017, according to eMarketer.

If accurate, Instagram will by then have higher net mobile display ad revenues than both Google and Twitter. In 2015, Instagram racked up $595 million in mobile ad revenue around the globe, by eMarketer’s estimate.