Brands ‘need to do more ads on Instagram Stories’

Sep 20, 2018 | Mobile, Social media

Marketers are investing four times less on Instagram Stories than, despite Stories being half the price of posts on a CPC basis, according to new research.

The study, from Socialbakers, looked into brands spending habits on Instagram.

Marketers already know that Instagram Stories are a great way for brands to generate organic engagement on the platform. In contrast with regular Instagram posts that are consumed passively (they just appear in users’ news feeds), Stories are consumed actively.

Despite being able to use the Stories format for ads, we see that 4x less ad spend is invested in Stories than in posts, despite Stories being 2x cheaper than posts (on a CPC basis).


Social media data has long shown that Instagram is becoming the #1 social media platform when it comes to engagement for brands. When we look at engagement on an absolute level, Instagram has a lot more engagement for brands than Facebook, despite having a significantly smaller audience size.


Socialbakers’ Take: Brands need to consider leveraging ads on Instagram Stories. The data from social media cost and performance shows that when a new ad format is rolled out from the start, it’s always the most efficient (ad) type.

Source: Socialbakers

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