Photo and video sharing platform Instagram claims that it now has 500,000 global advertisers on the platform. The company says that 6 months ago, it had 250,000 advertisers. The US, Brazil, UK, Australia and Canada are top countries to advertise on the platform. Instagram was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion in 2012 and at last count, it claimed to have 500 million monthly active users. Some statistics: - Instagram claims that 50% of its users follow a business, and 60% users say that they discover products and services through Instagram. - 75% Instagram users act on a post by going to the website, searching, shopping or sharing that information. - 1 billion such actions have taken place on the platform since Instagram launched ads on its platform. - 70% of ‘performance’ campaigns contributed to online ad money or mobile app installs. - Performance on ads increased by 45% since June this year, and that it contributed to a 2% increase in offline sales. - 1.5 million businesses got a business profile in 2 months of launch. Note that in March, Instagram updated its photo feed to display best posts or content based on the likelihoods, interests, relationship with the user, and timeliness of posts. Previously, it displayed posts in a chronological order. This change was likely to help the company bring in ad revenues as well, since it could contextually place ads depending on a user’s feed. Indian Instagram users A Nielsen study stated that 80% of the Instagram’s Indian…
