Video dominates Instagram ads, comprising 66% of all ad impressions on the network. With marketers flocking to Instagram — 2 billion ad impressions in 2015 were eclipsed by the 44 billion served to-date — research showing the most used tactics is valuable. Announcing his company’s research on the Brand Networks blog on Aug. 27, Andrew Brown writes in “Instagram Advertising Research 2018: No Longer Facebook’s Kid Brother” that there’s good pricing news for marketers: “Advertising spend on Instagram managed through Brand Networks has rapidly and consistently ballooned since the introduction of advertising on the platform in 2015. Instagram ad spend increased by 9X between 2015 and 2017 with a growth rate of at least 57% each year. “While demand increased, the same cannot be said for price inflation in relation to cost-per 1,000 impressions (CPM). In fact, average CPM has mostly held steady. Overall, Brand Networks witnessed a small increase in average CPMs in 2017, but is observing a return to 2016 norms in 2018.” As the Brand Networks press release on MarTechSeries.com points out, the company’s research analyzes 36 months of data and 44 billion Instagram ad impressions from its own customers. The social ad platform company’s had access to the Instagram ads API since its inception, and so the report that “looks at advertising trends from June 2015 to July 2018, reveals Instagram’s stunning growth since the launch of its Ads API, its price stability over time, and the rise of video-based content on the platform.” As a result, Brand Networks has been able to see the rise of Instagram Stories and its corresponding ads. Brown writes: “Brand Networks served about as many video impressions by the end of June 2018 as the company did in all of 2017. “In the first half of this year, video content made up 66.2% of the total ad impressions served on Instagram, evidence that the advertising experience for users on Instagram is led by video on both Feeds and Stories.” In addition to Instagram Stories ads, marketers reaching the 1 billion Instagram users can use in-app payments and shopping tags. Brand Networks expects ad impressions to increase 80% between 2017 and 2018, and its customers will spend 65% more this year on Instagram ads as a result. Brown says Brand Networks studied CPG, retail, fast food, media and entertainment, financial services, and telecommunications and technology verticals for four years. He adds: “With the exception of Financial Services brands, industries that Brand Networks collected CPM data for over this period maintained steady price efficiency, ultimately hovering around the annual rollup benchmarks each year.” The findings detailed on MarTechSeries.com show: “Video has dominated the ad experience created by media and entertainment, CPG and retail brands, representing 78%, 73% and 60% of the impressions served by these industries, respectively.” Instagram ads will only continue to grow. MarTechSeries.com concludes: “Overall, advertisers are flocking to Instagram. The channel continues to demonstrate an ability to help advertisers reach their business objectives, and can be relied upon to deliver high performance and stable price efficiency at scale, across a broad range of industries and advertising goals.” What do you think, marketers? Please respond in the comments section below.
Video accounts for about two-thirds (at least 57%) of total ad impressions on Instagram, according to Brand Networks. The social ad platform company, which analysed 36 months of data and 44 million Instagram impressions of its own customers, concluded that users' ad experience was driven by video on both Feeds and Stories. Ad spend also increased nine times between 2015 and 2017, with a growth rate of 66.2% a year, the report added. But, in good news for marketers, cost per 1,000 impressions (CPMs) stayed largely flat over the period.