If you use Instagram, you may start to see some things that you didn’t see before (and, no, I’m not talking about more cat pictures!). Instagram has found a way to appease advertisers with new commercial spots that play in loops.

While this isn’t necessarily great news for Instagram users that don’t want to see commercials regularly, it is one way for the company to appeal to more advertisers, and, thus, more advertising dollars.

Automatic Play

If you’re thinking that your Instagram settings are set to play videos automatically, think again. Instagram has changed its basic settings, so that the videos play anyway. You can select to have the videos play on WiFi only, but that is a setting that you will have to tweak yourself. If you just let the app go as it is right now, the videos will play, and there’s not much that you can do about it.

For obvious reasons, users aren’t going to be happy with continuous videos playing in Instagram feeds, since many of those videos are going to be of the advertising sort. Plus, unwillingly playing videos when you’re not connected to WiFi means that you will be eating up data that you never intended to use, which isn’t exactly the best way to win over users, Instagram. However, advertisers will like this new change, and that’s what Instagram is hoping for.

Vine Competition

Setting up videos that play in a loop will also help Instagram to compete with Vine. The difference here is that Vine videos only last six seconds while Instagram’s videos tend to last more than 15 seconds. While a Vine video is quick and to the point, it’s safe to say that the Instagram videos will be a lot more painful for users. You can simply scroll to the next image, but you can’t disable looping videos completely.

There is one advantage to continuously looping videos, though, if you’re one of the Instagram users that enjoys uploading videos regularly - you can force your followers to watch the videos, like it or not - until they move to the next clip, anyway. Instagram is walking a fine line between appealing to users and appealing to advertisers, though.

A Careful Balance'

Facebook (owners of Instagram) is great at raising revenue through advertising, and that’s what the company is trying to do with Instagram too. Some have quickly tired of Facebook and all of that company’s ads, though, so hopefully Instagram won’t be the same. While some people will love the continuous video addition, others are bound to detest it. Instagram might lose some followers this way, but hopefully the app can hang on to both followers and advertisers in the long run.

As Instagram moves closer and closer to becoming another Vine, it will be interesting to see whether or not current users stick around. If you have Instagram, you’ll notice the changes immediately - and keep in mind that you have to change your settings to only view videos on WiFi.