Instagram is losing power?

Instagram started out as an SNS focused on photo editing, but since its acquisition by Facebook, the utilization of the advertising platform has skyrocketed. A report was released that states that the rate of participation in Instagram influence posts has continued to decrease since 2016, and that the rate of decline in 2019 was remarkable.

According to the marketing company InfluencerDB, the percentage of sponsored posts that companies request ads on Instagram was 2.4% in the first quarter of this year. This is more than 40% less than 4% in the same period three years ago. In addition, it was found that for influence posts other than sponsors, it decreased from 4.5% to 1.9%.

The average participation rate of 10,000 followers or more is 3.6%, but the participation rate of 5,000 to 10,000 followers is 6.3%, and the participation rate is higher for 1,000 to 5,000 followers, and 8.8% for followers and fewer followers. see.

By field, overall participation rates are falling in all categories including beauty, fashion, sports, food, lifestyle, and fitness. Among them, the travel sector, which boasted a high participation rate, is decreasing from 8% to 4.5%. For reference, the Influencer DB side calculated the participation rate by the number of followers and the average number of likes per post.

The good news for mobile marketers is that sponsored posts have a higher engagement rate than posts without sponsors. In the case of sponsors, this is because the Instagram algorithm judges and takes precedence as it is a high-quality post. On the other hand, it is worth considering that the overall participation rate is decreasing due to the flooding of sponsored content on Instagram.

A similar decline is seen in a report released by marketing firm Trust Insight. For example, in the fashion industry, the average participation rate of Instagram influencers starts to drop from around May when visualized as a graph.

Also, when you look at the average brand participation rate on Instagram, it shows a similar downward trend. This survey was based on the total number of posts and the size of followers on 12,451 Instagram accounts with 8.35 million followers.

Trust Insight says that API changes are not the reason for the decline in participation rates. As a way to increase the participation rate, external linkages such as storytelling posts, other platforms or email links are suggested. Related information can be found here .