Instagram news for 2013 brings a twist in recent days as the popular photo-sharing network announced that there is a very high possibility that it will have to integrate ad space by next year, according to Emily White, current director of business operations at Instagram.

According to ABC News, the service that was bought by Facebook more than a year ago for $1 billion is yet to bring any satisfactory revenue despite its impressive user subscription of over 150 million.

As much as there are quite a number of brands that are already using Instagram for marketing, the service has still remained free to date. ABC news reported that this is not the first time that the option of selling advertising has come up. For a short while last year, Instagram added clauses to their terms of service that meant users would no longer own photos once they shared them on the site. Advertisers would be within their legal limits to use any of these photos from Instagram without paying a dime. This clause was however removed after a short run.

According to ABC News, at the time of its release back in 2010, the company did not focus on how they would eventually gain revenue. The senior analyst at Pivotal Research, Brian Wieser claimed that there are very many companies that make their business model around getting their digital products or services known first and then going after revenue. Brian Weiser compared the model to how Twitter did not receive any revenue until when it finally became a necessity.

Now that Facebook has invested $1B in the platform, Instagram days of no revenue earning are numbered. ABC states that Instagram officially confirmed with them that users should not be expected to see ads next year.

Wieser continued on to add that despite the fact that the company will need ad revenue, it does not necessarily mean users will be bombarded with spam from sponsors. The best model would be to earn revenue without becoming obtrusive to the users.