Instagram Added 300k Advertisers in the Last Six Months

Here is our take on the most notable stories in Digital and Social Media Marketing from last week.

Last week, Facebook announced new partnerships to enhance their campaign reporting, Twitter launched the ‘Twitter Audience Platform’, and Instagram boasted about their incredible growth this year.

Facebook Is Rolling Out a Handful of New Measurement Tools for Advertisers

Adweek | September 21, 2016http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/facebook-rolling-out-handful-new-measurement-tools-advertisers-173631

Facebook has partnered with Nielsen Catalina, Oracle Data Cloud, Visual IQ, and Neustar to provide marketers with a variety of tools to help weigh the effectiveness of cross-channel campaigns. Each of these partners will contribute differently; such as cross-referencing purchase data from retailers with ads run on both Facebook and Instagram, evaluation of how inclined people are to buy products, and measurement of ad impressions.

Our Take

Facebook is continuing their mission to be an end-to-end analytic solution. With these new measurement tools, marketers will be able to determine definitively how well campaigns are doing at driving both online and offline sales.

Considering the enterprise-level players involved in this new partnership, it is very possible that these metrics are something that only major brands will benefit from — at least initially.

Twitter Offers Native Ads On Audience Platform

Media Post | September 22, 2016

Following in Facebook’s footsteps with the Facebook Audience Network, Twitter is now offering advertisers the option to reach Twitter users on third-party apps via native ads. As of this writing, the Twitter Audience Platform [TAP] is only available to advertisers running campaigns with the objective of driving mobile app installs.

Our Take

While not an entirely unique idea, this is a very smart move to help enhance Twitter’s stagnant advertising offering. Considering Twitter’s relatively smaller user base, TAP gives the advertisers the ability to reach their audience more frequently which should, in theory, improve the performance of their campaigns overall. Additionally, Twitter will be tapping (no pun intended) into a native ad industry which has grown by 251% since 2015.

The Facebook Audience Network is a bonafide hit with advertisers, and hopefully the Twitter Audience Platform can have the same success.

Instagram Has Now Sold Ads to 500,000 Brands After a Huge 6-Month Run

Adweek | September 22, 2016

Since February of this year, Instagram has added over 300,000 advertisers. This surge has come in part from recent updates Instagram has pushed out benefiting businesses, including the ability to sponsor posts and create business profile pages. Perhaps more impressively, Instagram said in a recent “limited study” that their mobile ads are even lifting brick-and-mortar sales, as much as by two percent.

Our Take

Instagram’s huge success in 2016 is due to the fact that they are on the correct side of so many key trends in digital advertising today. First, mobile advertising and native advertising are proving to be significantly more successful than other digital ads. That being said, both sectors are projecting to command a majority of digital ad revenue over the next few years. Second, Instagram is in the midst of a multi-year, double-digital user growth rate, so more advertisers are turning to the photo-based social media platform to reach their audience. Finally, it doesn’t hurt to be connected to Facebook’s juggernaut of an ad platform. In the latest earning reporting, Facebook collected $6.24 billion in ad revenue.

Stat of the Week

via Marketing Dive | September 13, 2016

Out of a study of 1,000 mobile users, 92% of them purchased a product the same day that they searched keywords pertaining to that product.

About LiftEngine

Since 2005, LiftEngine's primary mission has been to help clients better understand and connect with their most responsive prospects and customers, online or offline. Our expertise is behind the marketing campaigns of 400+ clients.

Behind LiftEngine is LiftBase, our proprietary addressable consumer database. Comprised of 250 million US consumers, 140 million US households, and 1,000+ enhanced data elements, LiftBase powers our audience development services and industry-leading products, PortalLink and LaunchPad.

Let's connect today!