Dive Brief:
- In its relatively short time as an advertising platform, Instagram is cementing its popularity with marketers. Research from Brand Networks that looked at 1.6 billion Instagram ad impressions found the social media platform had 50 million impressions in August while still in beta, an increase to 100 million in September and reaching 670 million impressions in December.
- The Brand Networks study found Instagram had solid growth through the holiday season, doubling ad impressions each month of the season, and Brand Networks expects to serve a billion ad impressions on the social media platform each month.
- Fortune reported that an analyst team from Credit Suisse forecasts Instagram will reach $3.2 billion in revenue in 2016 with a 25% quarterly growth, and rising to $5.3 billion in 2017.
Dive Insight:
Instagram’s advertising success benefits Facebook, its parent company, by giving it some breathing room while solving how it will monetize Messenger, WhatsApp and Oculus VR. Along with steady and impressive growth in ad impressions, Instagram also saw growth in CPM, averaging $5.21 in September and rising to $7.20 in November, although average CPM dropped a bit to $5.94 in December.
Jamie Tedford, CEO of Brand Networks, told Ad Exchanger, "Instagram advertisers are able to take advantage of the sophisticated targeting and objective-oriented capabilities available to Facebook advertisers. These capabilities are currently some of the most robust in the industry."
Video ads have become popular on both Facebook and Instagram, and according to Tedford, Brand Networks is expecting to see the number of video ads served on Instagram possibly double this year. Brand Networks reported that video ads as a percentage of total ads it served rose from 9.54% in September to 22.52% in December.
One benefit for marketers is Instagram shares an ad platform with Facebook, making it easier to execute campaigns on both social media networks. Not to mention its visually-centric format, which lends itself to campaigns focused on compelling photo and video, such as fashion and food brands.