There was a time not that long ago when Facebook was the undisputed king of social media, and that having a social media presence was synonymous with Facebook with only Twitter managing to provide some kind of competition to this social media behemoth. However, the fact of the matter is that times have changed, and Facebook has managed to play it smartly enough that it has acquired brands that might have been competition so now the success that these subsidiaries enjoy is often credited to Facebook.
Instagram is perhaps one of Facebook’s biggest and most successful acquisitions, and it has allowed the social media platform to compete with up and coming platforms such as Snapchat which had started getting a huge chunk of the young population in on what they were offering. It seems like the efforts that Facebook put into making Instagram a truly worthwhile investment have ended up working rather too well, as recent data indicates that Instagram may just be more profitable than Facebook at this current point in time, at least in terms of the growth that it has seen over the course of the past decade.
If we want to analyze this growth, we first need to see how much money is being spent on Instagram by various users. A report, based on top 50 biggest brands, that is published every quarter by Socialbakers has indicated that Instagram has overtaken Facebook in terms of influence. A lot of this has to do with the new and exciting advertising opportunities that Instagram is offering, opportunities that are making it so that advertisers have more options such as the disappearing posts (AKA stories) which saw a 40% boost in advertising revenue for the platform.
The report also highlights that nearly 7 out of 10 videos posted by Facebook brand pages are shot horizontally, while surprisingly, vertical videos are performing better (in terms of reach and engagement) than horizontal videos across the board.
Similarly, the report explains that "women made up the majority of fans and followers of brand pages on both Instagram and Facebook."
Read next: TikTok Becomes the Breeding Home for Young Indie Video Creators, Ditching Celebs!
Instagram is perhaps one of Facebook’s biggest and most successful acquisitions, and it has allowed the social media platform to compete with up and coming platforms such as Snapchat which had started getting a huge chunk of the young population in on what they were offering. It seems like the efforts that Facebook put into making Instagram a truly worthwhile investment have ended up working rather too well, as recent data indicates that Instagram may just be more profitable than Facebook at this current point in time, at least in terms of the growth that it has seen over the course of the past decade.
If we want to analyze this growth, we first need to see how much money is being spent on Instagram by various users. A report, based on top 50 biggest brands, that is published every quarter by Socialbakers has indicated that Instagram has overtaken Facebook in terms of influence. A lot of this has to do with the new and exciting advertising opportunities that Instagram is offering, opportunities that are making it so that advertisers have more options such as the disappearing posts (AKA stories) which saw a 40% boost in advertising revenue for the platform.
"For the first time, the total audience on Instagram surpassed the total audience size on Facebook. Additionally, the total interactions on Instagram were nearly 20 times larger than those on Facebook. So, even though the top 50 brands published more posts on Facebook, the engagement on those posts didn’t reach the numbers that Instagram was able to achieve."Facebook is also seeing some growth with Facebook Stories but that growth is not even close to what we are seeing with Instagram. Still, data suggests that users are taking ads they see on Facebook fairly seriously, enough to often put the effort into looking at the ad in a full screen capacity.
The report also highlights that nearly 7 out of 10 videos posted by Facebook brand pages are shot horizontally, while surprisingly, vertical videos are performing better (in terms of reach and engagement) than horizontal videos across the board.
Similarly, the report explains that "women made up the majority of fans and followers of brand pages on both Instagram and Facebook."
Read next: TikTok Becomes the Breeding Home for Young Indie Video Creators, Ditching Celebs!
