Instagram Stories as a tool for native advertising: the specifics of selling content

The work is devoted to the consideration of the specifics of selling content in stories. The stories format is considered as relevant and effective marketing tool. Based on modern statistical data, as well as research by specialists in the field of SMM and native advertising, we highlight the main advantages of Instagram network as a space for various kinds of marketing innovations, describe the functional, content and stylistic features of stories. We focus on the native presentation of advertising information in stories, which manifests itself in the maximum mimicry (imitativeness) to the format, style, blog topic and the specifics of the media platform on which this tool is used. A feature of selling information in stories is the fact that content is selected for advertising that is relevant to the brand, product, communication strategy, which ensures high-quality, meaningful integration of SMM text into the blog format. The research material is polymodal texts of two bloggers whose Instagram accounts are characterized by different issues, different target audiences and, as a result, different ways of broadcasting advertising information through stories (publications of 2020 are analyzed). As a result of the analysis, we highlight the main features of the modern SMM text used in stories, the form and function of the most common types of content.