Instagram breezes past two major milestones (FB)

Instagram User Growth

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Instagram just passed important advertiser and user growth milestones, TechCrunch reports:

Two million active advertisers on the platform. Instagram now has two million monthly active advertisers, up from one million advertisers in March of this year, driven largely by growth in small and medium-sized business. This is still under half of the five million advertisers Facebook said it had in April 2017, indicating that Instagram has lots of room to grow. Below, we'll make the case for why Instagram's advertiser numbers are likely to grow even further.
800 million monthly, and 500 million daily, users. Meanwhile, the platform also reached 800 million monthly users, up 100 million since April 2017, and 500 million daily users, up from 300 million daily users in August 2016, Instagram's user growth could be a result of the numerous products and features it has released recently. Instagram Stories, disappearing Direct Messages, Carousel posts have all been introduced since June 2016, when the platform last reported its daily active user count.

Two million advertisers is impressive, but here are three reasons why Instagram is poised to reach even more:

It continues to add users at an impressive speed. The company added 200 million daily users in a little over a year, and also hit 800 million monthly users, adding its last 100 million monthly users in five months. This is incredibly fast growth, albeit slightly slower than the four months it took to add 100 million monthly users the last time around. Instagram is also overshadowing its close rival Snapchat, which has 173 million daily users and added just 30 million users from Q1 2016 to Q2 of this year.
Users are spending long amounts of time in-app. Users under the age of 25 spend over 32 minutes a day on Instagram, while those older than 25 spend over 24 minutes a day on the platform. Additionally, users over 25 spend a lot more time in Instagram than Snapchat, where they're averaging more than 20 minutes per day. The more time users spend in the app, the greater chance that advertisers have in reaching those users.
Advertisers will be lured by more video content. Instagram is becoming more video-centric — time spent with video on is up more than 80% year-over-year, and users are producing four times as many videos daily than last year, the company just told TechCrunch. Video begets higher engagement, which is attractive to advertisers. Moreover, more video should mean a more diverse range of content for users to enjoy, opening the door for advertisers to target more specific (niche) audiences.

Social networks are here to stay, and they're constantly evolving. Globally, more than 2.8 billion people — or 37% of the world's population — use social media, but the way those users interact with each other, and the platforms they adopt, vary widely.

Kevin Gallagher, research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has put together a report on social media demographics that highlights the key audience demographics for six major social platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. It also:

Breaks down the reach of social platform audiences in terms of age, income, education, and gender.
Examines how time spent and monthly users across major age brackets have changed in the past three years.
Explores the preferences of US teens and young millennials, and how they're changing.
Identifies the most important demographic changes that advertisers should monitor as social platforms continue to grow.

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