• by Ben Frederick  @mp_benfred, May 19, 2016

As Facebook continues to pursue what is almost a video-first line of development, Instagram announced today that video will now be included in the social picture-sharing app’s carousel ads.

If you remember from Facebook’s initial launch of the format back in 2015, carousel ads are one unit of an ad that can contain three to five pictures (and now videos) that users can swipe through.

Advertisers can direct the order in which their ads will appear on the carousel. Disney used the format to tell a story with a series of videos for "Alice Through The Looking Glass," a promotion for the new movie of the same name.

According to a blog post from Instagram, time spent watching videos on the platform has increased by 40% in the last six months. 60% of all the impressions served on Instagram came from video ads, according to Brand Networks.

Facebook and Instagram are both becoming more video-oriented as mobile users spend more time on their platforms and consume more video content in general. The social giant has cited numbers from Cisco that mobile video will make up about 75% of all mobile data traffic by 2020.

Carousel ads drive a 2.5 point lift in ad recall compared to single picture ads, according to the Instagram blog post. That combined with the platform’s popularity among millennials has made platform a must-have venue for advertisers.

Facebook is also experimenting with allowing users to leave videos as comments on its platform.