This week, Instagram reaches 2 million advertisers, just six months after reaching 1 million. Also, Facebook is making it easier to use Instagram; the YouTube Studio app has added some useful new features; and why Millennials and Gen Xers watching less TV than ever is good for content marketers.
Instagram doubles number of advertisers in six months
You may remember hearing recently that Instagram had reached 1 million monthly advertisers. Heck, you may have even read it here. Well, just six months later, the company has reached another milestone: 2 million advertisers.
In a blog post this week, Instagram shared some details about why advertisers are increasingly turning to the photo- and video-sharing app for reaching audiences.
The number of videos created each day on the platform has increased 4x from last year, and the amount of time spent watching videos in the app has increased by 80 percent over the same time period.
So, why should you care that Instagram now has 2 million monthly advertisers?
Because running ads on Instagram isn’t as difficult as you might think
If you haven’t jumped aboard the Instagram advertising bandwagon, there’s a good chance your competition already has. The good news is that getting started may not be as difficult as you might think, especially if you are already running Facebook ads.
“You cannot run an ad on Instagram unless you are connected to your Facebook account,” social media consultant Jenn Herman said on the Social Media Marketing Podcast. “And the nice thing is you get a lot of the features that you are used to from when you run Facebook ads.”
Because your Facebook reach is decreasing
Once upon a time you could rely on Facebook to reach all the people you wanted to reach. Times have changed. According to a recent report from BuzzSumo that analyzed more than 880 million Facebook posts published by brands, the amount of engagement on these kinds of posts has decreased around 20 percent since January 2017.
According to Steve Rayson, Non-Executive Director at BuzzSumo, paid promotion at Facebook can’t keep up with algorithm changes to the news feed.
“Facebook organic reach has declined significantly, Rayson shared on the BuzzSumo blog, “and increases in paid promotion have not enabled brands and publishers to maintain their levels of Facebook engagement.”
Even though Instagram has toyed with its algorithm, users are still mostly seeing what they want to see, making the channel a prime place for you to reach your intended audience.
Because people actually watch Instagram Stories
Facebook Stories obviously still hasn’t taken off, and Snapchat stories are now playing catch-up to Instagram. If you want to utilize the story format for ads, Instagram is your best option.
Having said that, Neil Patel, co-founder at Crazy Egg, said that Instagram Stories ads might require more patience for a payoff than other kinds of ads.
“Any type of advertising you do on Instagram, it’s not effective unless you run it for a very long period of time,” Patel said on the Marketing School Podcast. “Instagram won’t get you as direct of a ROI as Facebook or Google AdWords. It’s more for branding, so make sure people are seeing your stuff multiple times.”
Facebook is enhancing its connection with Instagram in new ways. The social media giant now offers users the option to switch to their Instagram profiles without ever needing to leave the Facebook app. According to a report in AdWeek, Facebook is also testing a similar integration with WhatsApp.
A new report has found that more than half of Millennials and Gen Xers watch no content at all on traditional TVs. The good news for digital content marketers is that these audiences are still very much consuming videos on social and mobile apps and devices. There are more opportunities than ever to reach video-viewing audiences, but the opportunities are also more fragmented.
YouTube Studio announced two new features to make the app more useful for creators. The first feature allows creators to schedule the publishing of YouTube videos directly from the app. The second gives creators easier access to their subscriber count, thanks to a subscriber number located at the top of the app screen. YouTube said it will be making more updates to the app in coming months.
Facebook is now allowing businesses to share digital ads with people who visited their physical place of business — or the places of business of their competitors. Advertisers can also target look-alike groups of people who may be interested in visiting their physical location and can exclude individuals who have already visited the physical place of business.
