Instagram Hits 2 Million Monthly Advertisers, Doubling in Six Months (again)

Instagram crossed the 1‑million-advertiser mark in March and is closing the gap on Facebook’s 5 million.

For the sec­ond time in the past year, Instagram’s adver­tis­er base has dou­bled in six months.

via GIPHY

Over the past month, more than 2 mil­lion busi­ness­es have bought ads on Insta­gram, the Face­book-owned pho­to-and-video app announced on Mon­day. That’s four times as many adver­tis­ers as Insta­gram claimed a year ago and twice as many as it claimed in March 2017 when it crossed the 1‑million mark.

Insta­gram is steadi­ly clos­ing the gap on its par­ent com­pa­ny, which claimed 5 mil­lion adver­tis­ers as of April 2017.

Of course, Instagram’s adop­tion among adver­tis­ers is helped by its par­ent company’s pop­u­lar­i­ty. Two years ago, Face­book enabled brands to buy ads on Insta­gram through the same self-serve ad-buy­ing tools they used to buy ads on Face­book. As a result, many Face­book adver­tis­ers have also become Insta­gram adver­tis­ers with the click of a but­ton. Asked how many of Instagram’s adver­tis­ers were also Face­book adver­tis­ers, an Insta­gram spokesper­son said the major­i­ty of Facebook’s top adver­tis­ers also adver­tise on Instagram.

Insta­gram has also helped itself by fol­low­ing Facebook’s adver­tis­er play­book, name­ly when it came to mak­ing itself a home for busi­ness­es, direct-response adver­tis­ers and video ad dollars.

Last year, Insta­gram rolled out its ver­sion of Facebook’s Pages, offer­ing busi­ness­es tools to enable them to man­age their accounts and pay to pro­mote their organ­ic posts as ads from with­in its app. In March, Insta­gram said that 8 mil­lion com­pa­nies had con­vert­ed their accounts to busi­ness profiles.

Orig­i­nal­ly pitched as a chan­nel for brand adver­tis­ing, the app has been able to attract direct-response adver­tis­ers look­ing to get peo­ple to click on their ads. Insta­gram faced some ear­ly set­backs in win­ning over these more click-mind­ed mar­keters, but it has over­come those obsta­cles in the past year, accord­ing to agency execs.

Mean­while, the increas­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of video on Insta­gram has also increased its pop­u­lar­i­ty among video-hun­gry brand adver­tis­ers, despite ear­ly pes­simism. Accord­ing to Insta­gram, as of June 2017, peo­ple were spend­ing more than 80 per­cent more time watch­ing videos on Insta­gram than they were a year ago, and the num­ber of videos post­ed dai­ly had grown four­fold in that time.

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