As of this week, Instagram has started to test the removal of Likes on a small percentage of accounts in the U.S. To find our point of view continue reading below and click here for our July blog post.Overall, we think this is a good thing. There is a health epidemic that needs to be addressed and the effectiveness of ads to influence decision making is through highly targeted, relevant impressions at scale and not on the small percentage of people that Like.As an ad industry, we were obsessed with banner clicks until we learned from the Natural Born Clickers study from comscore and Starcom that 85% of all clicks came from 8% of Internet users who typically had little money and a lot of time on their hands.We are now obsessed with Likes simply because the metric is highly visible. For our latest updates on the Instagram Like news, see below…Q: Will marketers be able to measure Likes if they are not publicly viewable?A: Yes, as long as they are working with the right tech platform like Socialtyze’s Qu Technology that accesses the Likes through the Instagram API to pull the data and report in the same manner as before.Q: What are the results from the previous tests that Instagram ran in Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand?A: A Study by HypeAuditor published on Social Media Today reports that influencers with followings between 5K-20K saw a drop between 3% and 15% in Likes across all seven countries.

A similar effect occurred for influencers with followings of 1K-5K and 100K to 1 MM. Japan was the only country to show an increase in Likes.

While the early tests show that Like counts may decline, we do not feel this devalues the impact of the influencer's ads; it simply forces us to move toward more meaningful measuring sticks.Q: Has Instagram made any more statements on the matter?A: Indeed, they have. Watch Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, in a recent interview below. In sum, he said, "It is about young people. Depressurizing Instagram and making it less of a competition….to make more space to connect with people that they love and things that inspire them most."