• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, June 3, 2014

Hoping to fortify its position as the leading photo-sharing app, Instagram just expanded its filtering options to include brightness, contrast, saturation and “warmth.”
 
“When you go to select a filter, you’ll now see a new wrench icon,” Instagram explains in a Tuesday blog post. “Tap it, and you’ll find a tray of photo editing tools ready for you to explore.” Users can also adjust how much of a filter to apply to a photo by double tapping the filter icon.
 
While marketers have been more than willing to test campaigns on Instagram, measuring the success of such efforts remains tricky.
 
Presently, there is no way to measure, say, how a couple of ice cream close-ups on Ben & Jerry’s Instagram page drove (or didn’t drive) in store sales, according to Michoel Ogince, director of platform & product strategy at Big Fuel Communications.
 
Yet, speaking at OMMA Social, late last month, Ogince said he was confident that Facebook would implement changes so advertisers can reliably measure the entire “360 degree” purchase funnel.
 
As it stands, some analysts say the time has never been better for marketers to play in Instagram’s sandbox.
 
Why? Despite boasting record engagement levels and a cool factor not seen since Facebook’s early days, Instagram’s relative infancy means that marketers have yet to overrun the filtered-photo network, Forrester Research analyst Nate Elliott explained in a recent report.

Top brands’ Instagram posts are currently enjoying a per-follower engagement rate 58 times higher than their Facebook posts -- and 120 times higher than their Twitter posts, by Forrester’s calculation.
 
Further strengthening engagement levels, Elliott pointed to Instagram’s younger users, who appear more willing to interact with brands than older consumers. At least for the moment, the median age of an Instagram user is 27, compared to Facebook’s median age of 40.