Digiday+ Research deep dive: Brands’ confidence in Instagram grows, while agencies’ confidence wavers

By Julia Tabisz

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Last week, we covered that confidence in Facebook’s ability to drive marketing success is trending downward among agencies and brands. This week, we tell a much different story about its Meta sibling Instagram, based on a Digiday+ Research survey of 138 agency and brand professionals. (Spoiler: Brands’ confidence in Instagram is actually growing.)

Digiday’s survey found that, along with Facebook, Instagram is the top marketing channel among agencies, with 93% of agency pros saying their clients spend at least a very small portion of their marketing budget on the platform.

However, there’s a big discrepancy between agencies whose clients spend anything on Instagram and those who spend a lot: Only 33% of agency pros said their clients spend a large or very large portion of their marketing budgets on Instagram. That puts the platform in third place when it comes to big spending, behind Google and Facebook.

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A very large portion of brands also spend on Instagram, Digiday’s survey found, but to a slightlly less degree than agencies. Eighty-five percent of brand pros said they spend at least a very small portion of their marketing budgets on Instagram, putting it in third place with Facebook after Google and online display ads.

And as with agencies, one-third of brands spend a large or very large portion of their marketing budgets on Instagram. It’s a big difference from the 85% who spend at all, but it puts Instagram in second place among platforms brands spend a large or very large amount on — behind Google but in front of Facebook.

Digiday’s survey found that most agency clients are spending a moderate amount on Instagram advertising. Nearly a third of agency pros (31%) said their clients spend a moderate portion of their marketing budgets on the platform, which has remained consistent over the last year.

The next-highest spending category, Digiday found, is among agencies who said their clients spend a large portion of their marketing budgets on Instagram. To be exact, one quarter of respondents said this. This percentage remained steady over the last six months, but did jump a bit from a year ago, when 19% of agency pros said their clients spent a large amount on Instagram.

Interestingly, agencies that said their clients spend just a small portion of their marketing budgets …read more

Source:: Digiday