Instagram is a tough nut to crack for publishers.

For news brands in particular, it’s difficult to build a large following on Instagram, it’s hard to make money from it, and it’s even a challenge to generate website traffic from the platform.

Nevertheless, as a social media site with three times as many active users as Twitter (one billion a month versus 330m) – and the future promise of significant financial incentives – publishers see Instagram as a nut worth cracking.