The new Chief Operating Officer of Instagram is Emily White and surprise, surprise, she worked for Google – before moving on to Facebook, before moving on to Facebook’s new acquisition, Instagram.

White has set out a plan to sell advertising within the next year. How will she do this you ask? Well, there is a phrase involved:

To capture and share the world’s moments

This is Instagram’s new mission, created by Chief Executive and co-founder Kevin Systrom, this mission is now the principle which Instagram is going to sell to you, your friends, your family and your favourite brands.

Instagram is facing the same problem that every social media platform faces when they want to start bringing in the advertisers – how do they keep their cool factor, and not chase away users who feel like they are being inundated by ads? This will be White’s challenge.

Under her supervision, the team at Instagram has grown immensely and now focus on customer service, brand relations and analytics, alongside product development.

The team has catalogued every account held by a major brand marketer, and White will meet with these companies. Just last week, she met with Coca-Cola, Williams-Sonoma and Ford Motor Co.

Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research Group said:

Theoretically, [Instagram] could be making hundreds of millions of dollars today, but they would need a big sales force and they would risk polluting the environment.

Levi Strauss & Co. recently launched a marketing campaign using the social media app. It will feature a cross-country train ride, with a group of artists that will produce music and art as they visit major cities. Cameras on the train will automatically upload content to Instagram. Levi’s hasn’t paid a cent to Instagram to run this campaign.

You can understand the opportunity they’re missing here.

Do YOU think brands will start to pay to launch campaigns they are currently able to launch for free?

[Source: The Wall Street Journal]