Instagram is trialling direct response ads within its Stories section, enabling marketers to pitch sign-ups and app installs to users.

One of the first ads to show off the format, as first reported by Ad Age, was one from mobile payments company SumUp – which invited people to swipe up on the ad to sign up for its service.

The combination of Stories and direct response advertising could prove very successful. The ads take up the entire screen in the vertical format and garner the full attention of the user, which in-turn should drive sign-ups and app installs.

However, the move from Instagram is just another example of the Facebook-owed photo sharing platform challenging Snapchat, which invented the Stories feature. The long-running saga has seen Instagram, and its parent Facebook, copy a host of features from Snapchat.

Last month, Snapchat began making its own strides with app install ads, using an in-house machine learning algorithm to enable advertisers to target the users most likely to install their apps.

Furthermore, this week, Instagram took another leaf out of Snapchat’s book by introducing a way for its users to search for Stories via either location or hashtag.