Instagram announced the introduction of advertising on the social sharing media platform in its blog post dated October 4, 2013.

The announcement triggered the speculation around Microsoft Xbox One and its possible use of user data to promote advertising.

Instagram's plans

The advertising roll out would be slow and steady for a while, given that the users do not have an opt-in option. The ads will show on their own and users can opt-out, that is discontinue them giving a reason for the same.

The ads will be started for users in United States over the next two months, slowly spreading to other geographical regions.

Facebook, Instagram's parent company, has the most comprehensive marketing and advertising plan based on its eponymous popular social network.

In the  blog, Instagram stated the reason for initiating advertising as the means for introducing new and better products for the users.

 "We have big ideas for the future, and part of making them happen is building Instagram into a sustainable business. In the next couple months, you may begin seeing an occasional ad in your Instagram feed if you're in the United States. Seeing photos and videos from brands you don't follow will be new, so we'll start slow. We'll focus on delivering a small number of beautiful, high-quality photos and videos from a handful of brands that are already great members of the Instagram community," said the post.

Possibility of Ads on Microsoft Xbox One

On the one hand, technology marketers are speculating whether Microsoft will share the Xbox users' data with marketers and introduce ads on the gaming console.

Instead of setting the speculations at rest, Microsoft Marketing and Strategy Vice President, Yusuf Mehdi fueled them further with his speech to speech to the Association of National Advertisers Masters of Marketing Conference.

Starting with how Xbox consoles integrate gaming, browsing and television into one single screen, Mehdi said, "That's a little bit of a holy grail in terms of how you understand the consumer in that 360 degrees of their life. We have a pretty unique position at Microsoft because of what we do with digital, as well as more and more with television because of Xbox. It's early days, but we're starting to put that together in more of a unifying way, and hopefully at some point we can start to offer that to advertisers broadly."

A day later, Larry Hyrb clarified Mehdi's stand with his Twitter post, "We do not collect information to share or sell. You are fully in control of your personal data. Your privacy is important to us."