23 Instagram Statistics Marketers Need to Know in 2022 (List + Examples)

With the ever-growing number of Instagram statistics out there, it can be mind-numbing to identify the ones worth paying attention to. Not just this, but also the pressure of knowing what to do and how to use those numbers can get very overwhelming, very quickly.

The solution? This list of only the most crucial Instagram stats marketers should know about, including key takeaways and best practices to bring those numbers to life and give your Instagram marketing strategy a facelift for better results.

Instagram Revenue & Marketing Budget Statistics

1. Instagram reported their revenue to be $24B in 2020 

Instagram revenue has been steadily growing over the years. As per recent reports, it sporadically increased from over $17B in revenue in 2019 to $24B in 2020. Most of this is ad revenue and campaign earnings as more marketers and businesses across industries increased their spending on Instagram. 

This is because of some significant Instagram green flags—it has a youth audience, you can add links for direct purchasing, the audience actually wants to see ads, and they actively buy through it plus validate their purchases through influencers, another revenue-generating source for Instagram.

2. 78% of marketers worldwide use Instagram, and 64% plan to increase their Instagram use

The day Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, said the platform is no longer just a square photo-sharing app, it became clear how far Instagram has come, not just in terms of user growth but also the role it plays in the modern marketing mix.

There are over 1.3 billion Instagram users, making it the fifth-largest social media platform and the second favorite platform for marketers—after Facebook. So, it’s not surprising 78% of marketers use Instagram, and 64% plan to increase their usage, making it the perfect avenue for brands to reach global audiences across generations to market their products and services, and subsequently, their revenue goals. 

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3. Instagram spent $390M in marketing in 2021  

Instagram almost doubled its marketing spend from 2020 to 2021, totaling a whopping $390M. As per a recent New York Times report, Instagram spent a large portion of this budget targeting teens through ads as Facebook believes teens are a vital audience segment to advance their growth. 

This increase in marketing spend towards teenagers is because Instagram is standing on the brink of losing this audience to their competitors. A recent survey found 35% of teens love Snapchat, 30% said TikTok was their favorite social media app, and only 22% of teens ranked Instagram as their most liked channel.

Besides, almost 40% of the Instagram users are 22-years old and younger, and about 50% of the teens in the US spend more time on Instagram than Facebook, making them a crucial part of the Instagram user base for driving revenue.

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4. Meta reported a total of $14B in marketing and sales costs since Facebook rebranded  to Meta

Ever since Facebook rebranded to Meta, they’ve spent over $14B in marketing and sales costs, a significant increase from their 2020 spend, $9.9B. This cost went into refining and improving their core services and their existing brands—Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp. 

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Key Takeaways and Best Practices

Instagram is here to stay. It’s a platform where you don’t just get to market and position yourself in front of Gen Z but also wide demographics across generations. 

Besides, the pandemic has accelerated the Instagram wave, with more brands allocating their budgets to Instagram and effectively seeing results with it.

If you’re serious about Instagram, focus on both paid and organic marketing strategies to increase your engagement and get results. 

Here are some best practices to help you do it better:

• Find a sweet spot between value-added educational content and promotional content that highlights your product/services as a solution to your audience with a fun or entertainment twist. Sephora is an excellent case in point.
  

• Keep an eye on trends, and show your audience you’re relevant and updated. For example, Later Media got over 182,000 views on one of their Instagram reels that cashed in on the buzz around the second season of the Netflix Series, Emily in Paris.

• Turn your followers into a community of brand advocates by genuinely engaging with them and being a part of social conversations. For example, Wendy’s National Roast Day campaign is one of the most followed campaigns on Instagram and Twitter, where the brand replies to and roasts every person in the comments. It’s fun, entertaining, and shows the brand cares to engage.
  

• Allocate your Instagram ad spend wisely and create scroll-stopping content that’s visually pleasing and entertaining enough to make the user stop, stare and then take action.
  

• Practice social listening to understand what your audience wants and how you can address their needs with your content while staying true to your brand’s personality
  

• Invest time in creating short-form video content on Instagram. The IG interface has redesigned to place the reels button in the center of the app, and stories on top which acts as precious real estate that you can leverage to be more discoverable, and drive engagement.

Instagram Engagement Statistics: Best and Worst Time to Post

5. 12PM to 3PM EST on Tuesday is the best time to post on Instagram 

Even though Instagram allows you to post your content anytime, anywhere—posting it at the right time is super important to maximize your reach. Otherwise, your posts might not be visible on your followers' feed, let alone those outside it.

To avoid this from happening and ensure you’re getting the highest reach and engagement within the first hour of posting, post between 12 pm to 3 pm EST on Tuesday.

However, this is just the best time of the week to get the highest reach, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t post during any other day of the week or hour. 

Your ideal posting time depends on many factors like: 

• Industry
• Time zone
• Audience demographics
• Location. 
  

Besides, you can also find your personalized best time to post by experimenting with posting during different times of the day. You can then use Instagram insights to measure your results and find your audience’s most active hours to post during that time window for the best results. 

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Key Takeaways and Best Practices 

• Publish content at a comfortable cadence. The algorithm rewards consistency, but not the kind where you publish randomly during the week. So, stick to a posting schedule and try publishing at your ideal posting time.
  

• Use a social media scheduler like Later to batch create and schedule your posts to automatically get published at the best time during the day. Besides, it’ll help you be more consistent and creative.
  

• Be highly responsive with your community to kick your engagement rate up a level. The audience wants to engage with the human behind the brand and not a logo, so interact with them often—through stories, replies, post comments, etc.

Instagram Engagement Statistics: What Are The Best Post Formats?

6. The average engagement rate of any kind of post format overall decreased from 2.26% in 2020 to 0.84%.

Instagram engagement is the holy grail of Instagram success. It's a strong metric indicating if your audience relates with your content and finds it interesting enough to engage with it. However, over the years, the meaning of Instagram engagement has expanded from just likes and comments to shares, saves, and direct messages (DMs) too.

Today, this engagement rate has decreased to 0.84%, especially since so many brands have started creating content on Instagram, fighting for the same audience’s attention in a cut-throat attempt to drive engagement. This also suggests over 50% of Instagram accounts, including the highly influential ones, only receive less than 1% engagement on their posts.

Whenever a company drastically changes its product—it’s natural to lose some users and see a dip in engagement.  However, based on the negative feedback of its vocal users, IG needs to balance its need to make revenue with providing its users an experience they enjoy again to drive engagement.

- Adrienne Sheares, Digital Strategist and Founder at ViviMae Labs

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7. While engagement is down in terms of likes and comments it’s higher in saves, shares, and views

There’s a higher trend of users saving, sharing, and viewing content—in whichever format—than liking or commenting on it. This interesting fact about Instagram might show a tendency to prefer stories and reels with the popularity of video content in 2020, where video posts were more likely to see higher likes and comments with 888 likes and 24 comments on average.

At the same time, single-image posts saw a considerable decrease signaling the importance of an interactive and engaging element in content—which is promising in video content.

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8. Here’s the average engagement sorted by type of post

For average engagement, video posts hit a home run every time. However, in 2021, the type of post with the highest number of median likes and comments were carousel posts that received almost 64 likes and five comments from 50% of the users.

This shows although larger and more influential accounts are getting significant engagement through video posts, many still engage their followers through carousel posts. Videos closely follow carousels in median engagement, which could be because of the widespread adoption of newer video formats like IGTV and Reels in place of feed posts. 

Bottom line: Carousels receive the highest engagement in terms of likes and comments, closely followed by videos and single-image posts.

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9. Carousel Posts received the highest engagement when posted by business accounts (1.08%)

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In 2021, the average engagement by a business profile follower on their posts was 0.83%.

Out of this, carousel posts drew the most significant engagement from page followers, with an interaction rate of 1.08%, followed by image posts at 0.81%, and video with the lowest engagement rate post type at 0.61%.

While videos play a significant role in capturing the audience’s attention, retaining it is difficult. You can post in-feed videos of upto 60 seconds; however, unless the video incorporates excellent storytelling and edits to retain attention, the average user only spends three to ten seconds watching the video before their attention span runs out. But combining videos and carousels to post multiple short videos in a carousel format can generate great results and hold the users’ attention for longer. 

Carousel posts are interactive and give more information at a go. Brands can easily add the prices to particular slides individually which reduces the back and forth of inquiries from customers and the audience. Additionally, the keywords usage in carousels filter the content to come first when searched since the algorithm favors carousels with great usage of keywords, it’s a win!- Janet Machuka, Social media marketing strategist, influencer, and trainer.

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Key Takeaways and Best Practices 

• While crafting your Instagram strategy, decide your most important Instagram metric that'll support your larger business goals like brand awareness or conversions. This will help you create better-targeted messaging and post formats that’ll work best for you.
  

• Experiment with various post formats—videos, carousels, image posts, guides, IGTV, stories, and reels. Include a mix in your Instagram marketing strategy. You don’t even have to create each piece of content from scratch; you can repurpose your content from different platforms, resize and post it on Instagram. Olipop is a great example of a brand using multiple post formats to give its audience a variety of content formats to enjoy.
  

• Use your built-in Instagram analytics to see which post formats bring you the best results and double down on them.
  

• Collaborate with other creators in your niche to get more targeted reach from each other’s audience. You can leverage the new collaboration feature on Instagram and cross-exchange, and benefit from your followers and engagement. Here’s a great example of co-creation through this feature.
  

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Pro Tip: Make more engaging Instagram content like a pro with VEED. Easily resize and repurpose videos, add subtitles, add effects and more!

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Instagram Engagement Statistics: What are the best caption lengths and hashtags?

10. Overall, the best caption length for maximum engagement are between 500 to 2,000 characters.

In the case of Instagram captions, the longer your caption, the better engagement you’re likely to receive. However, this doesn’t apply significantly to larger influential accounts because even if they include a single word or emoji in their caption, they are likely to receive engagement.

The median engagement rate is the highest for posts with a caption length of 1000-2000 characters, which may drop if you go longer. Ideally, your best bet would be to keep your caption length between 500 to 2,000 characters—nothing less, nothing more. 

The likely explanation for the high engagement behind longer posts is captions allow you to connect with your audience better and narrate the story behind your content. Longer captions allow brands and creators to better communicate context, message, and values for the audience to engage with them.

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11. Reach increases by 11% when you use more hashtags

Hashtags allow your audience to find your content in a cluttered pool of Instagram content. It also helps the algorithm categorize your content and suggest it to users looking for and engaging with similar content. So, it makes sense to have more hashtags to enhance your discoverability. 

However, it was shocking when Instagram suggested creators use 3-5 hashtags to get a good reach instead of its limit of 30 hashtags.

While using hyper-niched hashtags is the best way for Instagram to identify and categorize you, a study by Later found the opposite. They analyzed 18M posts and revealed the reach rate increases by 11% as the number of hashtags increases. Like the reach rate, engagement also sees an upward trend when you increase the number of hashtags beyond five. 

Organic reach is not dead. Hashtags are a key for reach and landing on the explore page just like keywords are for landing on the first page of Google’s search results. Hashtags help the Instagram algorithm understand what your content is about and who it’s for to categorize it better and show it to the right audience. Hashtags don’t work for most people because it’s hard and time consuming to learn how to select which tags to use based on your audience size and engagement rate. Luckily, Flick Academy has an amazing free course on hashtag mastery you can check out.
- Diana Briceño, head of content at VEED

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12. Most posts have an average of 11 hashtags

50% of Instagram accounts use between one and three hashtags; however, the sweet spot to get good reach and engagement is 11 hashtags. These hashtags should be super relevant to your industry, audience, and most importantly—your brand.

Although Instagram allows upto 30 hashtags, and there’s a common belief around “more is better,” 11 tags is the average out of a large sampling of content. 

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13. Here’s the median engagement VS number of hashtags used on a post

As per the median engagement, including no hashtags gets the lowest engagement. Using one or two hashtags improves engagement; however it’s maximum when you include 20 hashtags. These hashtag numbers vary with different statistics largely because of the engagement variance across small and large accounts.

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14. Here are the top 10 hashtags sorted by engagement

The most popular hashtags with the highest number of followers can’t guarantee high engagement. Instead, it’s important to use engaging hashtags that can get you the maximum number of likes and comments. 

• #bollywood
• #tbt
• #wildlife
• #couplegoals
• #tiktok
• #quotes 
• #memes
• #mumbai
• #kerala
• #viral
  

Six of the most engaged hashtags were specific to India. Additionally, nostalgia played a significant role in getting #tbt in second place, followed by hashtags surrounding the type of content like #tiktok #quotes #memes and #viral.

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15. The most engaging posts don’t typically tag people

Currently, around 73% of Instagram posts don’t contain any tags, which is a significant increase from last year’s 34% posts with no tags. Even with posts that included tagged users, 95% had three or fewer tags.

Additionally, the posts without tags received higher engagement in 2020 than those that included tags. While considering the average of likes, tagging two users was optimal; however, when considering the median of likes, tagging 16 users achieved the most likes but isn’t necessarily a best practice for every post.

Bottom line: tag accounts if you’re a small account but consider doing it sparingly as it may appear as spam and thus, result in low engagement. 

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Key Takeaways and Best Practices 

• Although based on account valuation, median engagement and average engagement—the number of hashtags you should include vary. All factors considered, your best bet is to include 11-20 hashtags in your Instagram post.
  

• Storytelling and relevance hold greater importance than word count. Prioritize writing more useful content in your captions but avoid filling it up with fluff for the sake of adding length. For example, Gaurav, a career creator, uses his captions to elaborate on his reel content and give more context to his audience.
  

• Use only necessary and relevant hashtags to help Instagram sort, categorize, distribute and position your content in front of the right set of people. See how Later includes super relevant audience, industry, and content-related hashtags to their post.
  

• Decide your hashtag size based on your audience size and current engagement. The statistical numbers are derived from analyzing multiple small to large accounts, but it’s essential to understand what will specifically work for your account. To gain a more strategic high-level understanding ofInstagram SEO and hashtags, try this course.
  

• Tag people only if you’re collaborating with them on that post or the content is about them. Beyond this, you might face the risk of being spammy.

Instagram Influencer Marketing Statistics for Businesses

16. The global Instagram influencer market size is worth $2.3B and is projected to be a $13.8B industry by the end of 2022.

No other platform has skyrocketed the influencer industry more than Instagram. The numbers speak for themselves—the Instagram influencer market size is worth $2.3B globally and is anticipated to be $13.8B by the end of 2022. 

Instagram is heavily focusing  on being creator-friendly. While a good chunk of the money entering the market is because of the plethora of new creators on the platform and the millions of views in reach they make due to Instagram’s algorithm on reels, the platform is consistently introducing newer monetization avenues for creators like subscriptions. A solid chunk of the money raised by startups across the globe goes back into influencer marketing initiatives, much of which happens across Instagram.

- Viraj Sheth, Co-founder & CEO at Monk Entertainment 

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17. Lifestyle is the leading influencer account category with the highest share of accounts.

Almost 11.59% of Instagram influencers create content around lifestyle, closely followed by music, photography, and beauty influencers. These influencers mostly document their life—everything they eat, wear, visit, and do. For this reason, they have a wide audience and are also the easiest category of influencers for brands to collaborate with and get significant results.

Lifestyle influencers have a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) of an aesthetically pleasing feed, beautifully-shot content, and an attractive way to present their life. This doesn’t necessarily include rich folks or influencers with a lot of money but just about anyone who wants to document how they live and share it with the world in the most authentic way. This is also why they enjoy a significant following and excellent brand deals. 

18. Close to 66.8% of Instagram influencers were fake, according to the latest report from 2020

Despite the growing Instagram influencer market size, an unethical fact recently revealed that in 2020, over 66.8% of Instagram influencers were fake. These profiles weren’t handled by the individuals themselves but mishandled under false pretenses. 

This also led to many Instagram scams as some brands failed to recognize the authenticity of the influencer.

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19. The majority of mega-influencers with more than 1M followers faked their engagement and followings.

As disheartening as it sounds, a majority of mega-influencers engaged in fraudulent practices to increase their follower count and engagement in 2019 and 2020. These include buying followers, likes, and comments, using engagement pods, and buying story views.

Here’s a list of the top 25 Instagram accounts with the highest percentages of fake followers:

20. Micro influencers have higher engagement rates than Instagram superstars.

Before we get to the statistic, let’s see the different types of Instagram influencers:

On Instagram, micro-influencers get almost 3.86% engagement rate which is much higher than the 1.2% engagement rate mega influencers with over a million followers enjoy. 

This is because micro-influencers have a smaller, and more niche audience. It’s not scalable to engage with a large part of your audience as you grow, especially when you have to prioritize other important business tasks. Here, having a small audience is easier to maintain..

Besides, micro-influencers are more affordable than mega-influencers. For example, Kylie Jenner charges almost $1.2M for a single Instagram post wheras micro influencers generally charge around $500-$1000 per post.

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21. The majority of brands use the same influencers across different campaigns

Influencer marketing is highly profitable if done right, but it isn’t easy to find and vet the right influencer, draft a mutual contract, and work with a different influencer each time. Having a pre-made contract template specifically for influencer marketing can save time and ensure that both parties are on the same page with regard to deliverables, expectations, and compensation. For this reason, it comes as no surprise that a significant portion of brands use the same influencers across different campaigns.

It’s easier to communicate expectations, co-create content, decide on deliverables and even work together. This relationship gets nurtured further, and both the brand and influencer benefit from a long-standing partnership in terms of content, satisfaction, and money.

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22. Businesses average $6.50 in return for every $1 spent on influencer marketing.

Influencer marketing is growing, and more brands are allocating their budgets towards it—for all the right reasons. Brands see an average $6.50 in return for every dollar spent on influencer marketing, with the top 13% earning $20 or more and around 70% earning $2 or more, with the rest either breaking even or failing to generate significant ROI.

What’s more, marketers rate influencer marketing as their fastest-growing customer acquisition channel, surpassing organic search and even email marketing. 

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23. Brands see $4.87 in earned media value for every $1 spent on influencers.

Earned Media Value (EMV) is the value of the exposure you gain on third-party sites or social media through marketing and PR. On Instagram, brands spend a dollar on influencer marketing and see around $4.87 in earned media value.

Key Takeaways and Best Practices 

• Despite a decreasing Instagram organic reach, influencer marketing can help you reach highly targeted audiences, get more earned media and make more money through conversions.
  

• Track influencer marketing efforts to see which influencers are helping you generate the highest ROI. Work with them consistently for higher repeatable chances of success.
  

• Rather than collaborating with an influencer solely based on their carefully designed and potentially falsified media kits, ask for screenshots of the influencer’s analytics. You can also use a tool like HypeAuditor to audit their Instagram page as an extra layer of authenticity verification.
  

• Influencers with bigger followings aren’t always better. While macro and mega influencers are great for campaigns prioritizing large-scale awareness, they might not be the best to build trusting relationships with the audience and convert them. Micro to mid-size influencers are more affordable but work best when you hire in volume to target conversions. This is because consumers tend to trust smaller pages that feel more like a friend.

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9 Most Popular Instagram User and Demographics Stats People Ask About

1. Instagram has 1.39 billion users worldwide. 
2. Instagram has 1 billion monthly active users. 
3. Instagram has 500M+ daily active users.
4. 31.2% of Instagram users are aged between 25 and 34 years old.
5. Over two-thirds of total audiences were aged 34 years or younger, making this an attractive platform for marketers.
6. 52% of Instagram users are females, and 42% are male. 
7. There are 200M+ businesses on Instagram.
8. The most liked photo on Instagram is a photo of an egg with 55+ million likes. 
9. People spend an average of 29 minutes per day on Instagram

Frequently Asked Questions About Instagram Statistics 

How do you turn on stats on Instagram?

You can only see your Instagram insights if you have a business or creator profile. If you’ve just changed your profile type, it can take up to 24 hours for the stats to show up.

How do I check my stats on Instagram?

1. Visit your Instagram Business or Creator profile. 
2. Tap on the insights button, and you’ll get a detailed view of your engagement, audience, and content metrics.

Can you see who views your Instagram profile?

Although you can see how many users visited your Instagram profile in the past seven, 14, and 30 days—you can’t see who visited your profile.

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Let’s Recap!

What started as a photo-sharing app has expanded into one of the leading social media apps in the world. Its amazing growth rate and engaging features make it the perfect platform for brands to position themselves, reach their audiences, engage with them and grow their business with higher conversions and revenue.

Use the statistics mentioned in this article to build your Instagram marketing strategy for 2022 and understand where you should prioritize your budget and attention. 

Here are three important action points you can takeaway from this article:

1. Become a better storyteller to capture and retain attention: From creating captions, carousels, and video scripts, to editing a video—everything should focus on telling a story. In the end, capturing and retaining attention comes down to mastering storytelling in different formats to form a personal connection with your audience.
2. Experiment, experiment, experiment: If you want to know the best time to post, number of hashtags, best post format, or which influencers you should hire for your brand, you need to embrace an experimental mindset. Always stay in learning mode but don’t overthink taking action.
   
3. Take advantage of producing video content: Instagram and other social media platforms are placing video–especially short-form content—front and center. Instagram has positioned the Reels icon in the middle of the bottom navigation and stories at the very top which shows they want users to create more video content and take advantage of these features to gain more visibility on the platform. So, leveraging them is your best bet to get in the platform’s good graces and drive results.

If you’re planning to include videos in your Instagram strategy, use VEED to create professional-looking videos easily, even if you’ve never edited a video before. 

Try VEED today; it’s free!