Instagram flexes their muscles
Instagram is continuing to show its prowess as a viable, engaging, and popular social media platform. Particularly within the mobile realm. According to a recent eMarketer report (https://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1013612), more than a third of mobile phone users, roughly 89.4 million Americans, will be on Instagram at least once a month in 2016.
That number is expected to surpass the 50% mark for the first time in 2017, with an estimated 51.8% of social network users using Instagram.
This rate of growth isn’t typical
The social platform’s user base growth is certainly a bit atypical for social networks. Compared to the social network sector’s overall growth this year of 3.1%, Instagram’s 15.1% growth is far faster than social network usage in general.
Their user base will exponentially increase over the next four years. In that time, the social network is expected to add 26.9 million users. This will almost double the user growth expected for Twitter and far outpace the growth rates of any other social platform.
Instagram + Facebook = much love
Such a robust growth in users is good news for parent company, Facebook. Instagram usage is helping to drive an increasing share of Facebook’s mobile ad revenues. It is said that in the coming year alone, 9.5% of Facebook”s worldwide mobile ad revenues (20.1% in the US) will be generated by Instagram. This share of ad revenue will grow to 14.0% globally (28.0% in the US) by next year.
With a rapidly increasing revenue potential, the social platform is generating the most momentum with advertisers. Advertisers are turning more and more to Instagram, particularly marketers that want to target mobile millennials. Instagram usage is by far strongest among the generational set.
This year, there will be 48.2 million millennial Instagram users in the US. And that usage isn’t set to slow down. It is expected that, by 2019, nearly two-thirds of all millennial smartphone users will use Instagram.
According to eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson, “Instagram and its parent company, Facebook, know that mobile has changed the way people—especially millennials and Gen X-ers—communicate, share and get information. That’s why they are leading the way in helping marketers reach this audience.”
