Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising

Transcription

1 Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising DIFFERENCES & BEST PRACTICES A SOCIALBAKERS STUDY

2 Facebook and Instagram are two of the biggest social media platforms, with a combined audience of over 2.7 billion users. The massive size of the networks community is currently being leveraged by more than 6 million marketers, which makes Facebook and Instagram some of the most popular spaces for social media advertising. The large number of users is just one of many assets, though. Facebook and Instagram are offering businesses many possibilities to customize their marketing strategies, including multiple ad formats, a variety of precise ad objectives, and advanced targeting options. That s why it s not surprising that so many companies turn to the networks to advertise. While both Facebook and Instagram can help marketers achieve their business objectives, it s important to understand the differences between the platforms. In order to tap into the networks marketing potential, companies need to develop effective strategies that will play to Facebook and Instagram s varying strengths. In this whitepaper, we discuss the platforms distinct features and explain how to best leverage them for advertising. We also provide valuable insights based on our exclusive data to help marketers get the most out of their Facebook and Instagram presence.

3 Table of Contents Facebook and Instagram s Audiences in Numbers 4 How Engaging Are Facebook and Instagram? 7 How to Select the Best Advert Format 9 What Ad Placements Should You Choose? 13 What Are the Most Popular Ad Placements? 15 How Engaging Are Different Ad Placements? 16 What Can You Achieve With Facebook and Instagram Ads? 17 What Are the Most Common Ad Objectives? 19 How Much Are Marketers Paying for Different Ad Objectives? 20 What s the Correlation Between Engagement and Advertising Costs? 21 The Takeaway 23

4 Facebook and Instagram s Audiences in Numbers Whether you already have a strategy in place or you re beginning to build one, knowing the key differences between Facebook and Instagram s communities is necessary to develop a marketing game plan that s properly tailored to each of the platforms. Here are some facts that will allow you to get a better idea of the audiences you are advertising to: Monthly Active Users billion Sources: VentureBeat: Facebook Passes 1.94 Billion Monthly Users, 1.28 Billion That Use It Daily ; TechCrunch: Instagram Now Has 800 Million Monthly and 500 Million Daily Active Users million Socialbakers Studies: Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising 4

5 Facebook and Instagram s Audiences in Numbers Biggest User Age Group year-olds (21% of user base) year-olds (25% of user base) Average Time Spent on Platform 35 minutes 15 minutes Sources: Statista: Distribution of Facebook users in the United States as of December 2016, by Age Group ; Statista: Distribution of Instagram Users in the United States as of December 2016, by Age Group ; Mediakix: How Much Time Do We Spend on Social Media? Socialbakers Studies: Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising 5

6 Facebook and Instagram s Audiences in Numbers Top User Locations India 241 million U.S. 240 million Brazil 139 million U.S. 88 million Russia 28 million Brazil 27 million Sources: The Next Web: India Overtakes the Usa to Become Facebook s #1 Country ; Statista: Leading Countries Based on Number of Monthly Active Instagram Users Socialbakers Studies: Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising 6

7 How Engaging Are Facebook and Instagram? Brands Receive More Engagement on Instagram Compared to Facebook Total Number of Interactions on Facebook and Instagram (in Millions) Audience differences are not the only thing marketers should prioritize while developing their Facebook and Instagram strategies. The platforms also vary in terms of the engagement volume, which can affect companies results and, consequently, the way they are distributing their digital marketing resources. Millions On Facebook, media companies receive over 4x more interactions than on Instagram. However, if you re a brand, you might want to focus on Instagram, where brands engagement is over 3x higher compared to Facebook. Therefore, companies unable to generate desired engagement solely on Facebook s marketing platform should use Instagram as a social media Entertainment Celebs Media Brands Community 0 marketing tool as well. Some brands are more successful in achieving the results they require when they optimize their use of both platforms. Chart Date Range: January March 2017; Sample: 20,686 Entertainment, Celebrity, Media, Brand, and Community Facebook Pages and 9,972 Entertainment, Celebrity, Media, Brand, and Community Instagram Pages Socialbakers Studies: Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising 7

8 TIP Just how much engagement your content will receive largely depends on the right timing. Knowing your audience s behaviors is key to ensuring your posts will achieve maximum exposure and response. With PrimeTime Publishing in Socialbakers Suite, you ll be able to publish at the optimal time and easily increase the number of interactions. Socialbakers Studies: Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising 8

9 How to Select the Best Advert Format In order to take full advantage of Facebook and Instagram s potential to engage, it s important to know the ad formats that drive the interactions. And because the platforms are different, marketers need to develop a slightly different strategy for each. Single Image An ad which allows you to create 6 different versions of one ad using one image Photo An ad using 1 photo What to Use It For Drawing attention to your business through eye-catching photographs Socialbakers Studies: Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising 9

10 How to Select the Best Advert Format Single Video An ad using 1 video that s up to 120 minutes long Video An ad using 1 video that s up to 60 seconds long What to Use It For Complementing your TV advertising campaigns Telling more complex business stories Carousel An ad using 2-10 scrollable images Carousel An ad using 2-10 scrollable images What to Use It For Directing users to specific places on your website Showcasing multiple products or services Explaining how your business or product work Telling a compelling story one image at a time Socialbakers Studies: Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising 10

11 How to Select the Best Advert Format Slideshow An ad using a looping video with up to 10 images What to Use It For Telling a brand story across devices Stories An ad consisting of one photo or video that s up to 15 seconds long that appears between people s stories What to Use It For Telling a brand story Canvas An interactive ad allowing you to tell a story using a mix of photos and videos What to Use It For Grabbing users attention and encouraging them to interact with your ad Acquiring new customers Raising brand awareness Socialbakers Studies: Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising 11

12 How to Select the Best Advert Format One of the things marketers should consider while picking the right ad format is the story they want to tell. For example, if there s one product in particular that a company wants to showcase, a single image ad might be sufficient. If marketers aim to promote a whole range of products or provide customers with additional information about the business, carousel or canvas ads would be a good choice. The choice of the platform is even more significant. Facebook is great for driving sales while Instagram has potential to raise brand awareness, which means that your presence on both of these platforms should be closely tied with your business objectives. Socialbakers Studies: Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising 12

13 What Ad Placements Should You Choose? Selecting a suitable ad format is equally important to deciding where to place your ad. On Facebook, you can select five different ad placements, while on Instagram your choice is limited to two different slots. Feeds Your ads appear within users News Feed. Groups Your ads appear in Facebook groups. Right-Hand Column Your ads appear in a column on the right-hand side to users accessing Facebook on their computers. Stories Your ads appear between people s stories. Feeds Your ads appear within users Feed. Instant Articles Your ads appear within Facebook Instant Articles in the mobile app and Messenger. In-Stream Video Your ads appear within videos on Facebook that are watched both on desktop and on mobile. Socialbakers Studies: Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising 13

14 What Ad Placements Should You Choose? The placements listed on the previous page only concern ads that appear directly within the platforms. Facebook offers marketers two additional placements that aren t platform-bound: Messenger and Audience Network. In the case of Messenger, ads are delivered as messages directly to the users through the Messenger app. Audience Network is more comprehensive, as it enables marketers to go beyond Facebook and place their ads in third-party mobile ads and websites. When choosing between the ad placements, keep in mind that the Right Column ads are only available for desktop while the Instant Articles, Messenger, Audience Network and Instagram ads will only appear on mobile. This information is essential to appropriately selecting ad placements for the stages of your audiences customer journey. Since most purchases are happening on desktop, marketers should consider desktop ads for the conversion stage and use mobile ads to reach users at the awareness stage. Socialbakers Studies: Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising 14

15 What Are the Most Popular Ad Placements? Facebook Mobile and Desktop News Feed Are the Most Popular Ad Placements Average Ad Placement Distribution on Facebook and Instagram News Feed (Mobile) News Feed (Desktop) 82.7% 78.8% We discovered that Facebook is a more popular space for adverts over Instagram by researching how companies leverage available ad placements. Facebook News Feed is the most frequently chosen ad placement, with 83% of ads appearing in its mobile and 79% in its desktop version. Instagram is far behind, as only 27% and 0.1% of ads were put within the platform s Feed and Stories, respectively. This means that businesses choose Facebook as their main advertising channel, while Instagram seems to just be complementing their strategy. As the chart shows, there s still a lot of room for adverts on Instagram, which is great news for marketers willing to move away from Facebook s increasingly crowded advertising space. But which platform s ad placements have returned best results for marketers? We researched some of the longest existing slots to find out. Mobile Right-Hand Column (Desktop) Instant Article Audience Network (Mobile) In-Stream Video (Mobile) In-Stream Video (Desktop) Messenger Home Story Messenger 26.8% 23.9% 15.9% 11.1% 9.0% 8.7% 0.4% 0.121% 0.001% Chart Date Range: January - June 2017; Sample: 587,767 ads published by Brands Socialbakers Studies: Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising 15

16 1.60% 1.40% 1.20% 1.00% How Engaging Are Different Ad Placements? Facebook Mobile News Feed Ads Have the Highest Click-Through Rate Median Ad Engagement by Placement We analyzed over 94,000 ads placed within the News Feed and Right-Hand Column across Facebook and Instagram to see how they differ in terms of engagement. Facebook mobile and desktop News Feed ads lead the way with the median Click-through Rate (CTR) of 1.6% and 0.8%, respectively. On Instagram, marketers experience significantly lower engagement compared to Facebook, as their CTR equals 0.3%. Finally, Right- Hand Column ads achieve as little as 0.1% CTR. 0.80% 0.60% 0.40% 0.20% 0.00% News Feed (Mobile) News Feed (Desktop) Instagram (Mobile) Right-Hand Column (Desktop) Engagement: Median CTR (in %) These numbers demonstrate that marketers business goals can be impacted by ad placement. For example, if a business aims to direct people to their website, they should consider investing in Facebook News Feed ads on mobile. Being aware of the marketing goals a company can achieve through particular ad placements will help you maximize your conversion rates. Chart Date Range: May - September 2017; Sample: 94,153 Facebook and Instagram ads, sourced from Socialbakers data; Note: Only ads with one ad placement were considered Socialbakers Studies: Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising 16

17 Awareness Brand Awareness Improve brand recall and recognition by showing an ad multiple times to people more likely to pay attention. What Can You Achieve with Facebook and Instagram Ads? Driving website traffic is not the only goal you can achieve through advertising on Facebook and Instagram. In fact, the platforms enable marketers to choose from a variety of ad objectives that can effectively power business results. Reach Let the maximum number of people know about your business by reaching the highest possible number of members of your audience. Consideration Traffic Increase the number of visits to your website and your app installs. App Installs Direct users to an app store where they can get your apps. Engagement Make the maximum number of users interact with your content or Page. Video Views Get the maximum number of users to watch your videos. Lead Generation Gather information about your audience, such as addresses, phone numbers, personal data, etc. Conversion Conversions Encourage users to visit your website or use your Facebook, Instagram or mobile app. Product Catalog Sales Show users products from your product catalog. (Facebook exclusive) Store Visits Drive users to visit your brick-and-mortar business location. (Facebook exclusive) Socialbakers Studies: Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising 17

18 What Can You Achieve with Facebook and Instagram Ads? Even though ad objectives on Facebook and Instagram might seem identical at first sight, we can see that Instagram lacks two conversion-related goals - product catalog sales and store visits. For this reason, the platform has limited capabilities to drive direct sales, which is something marketers should keep in mind when developing their social media strategy. Instagram can be best utilized for brand marketing, that is building relationships with your audience, increasing loyalty, and raising brand awareness. Facebook, in turn, is great for performance marketing and advertising that brings measurable results, such as purchases and store visits. To make the most of their ads, companies need to take an all-encompassing approach - one that is aligned with the platforms varying marketing potentials and supportive of the customer journey. Since many people use both Facebook and Instagram, you can target them on Instagram at the awareness stage and subsequently retarget them with consideration and conversion-stage content on Facebook. This way, you will be able to successfully nurture your audience further down the marketing funnel towards the completion of your advertising goals. Socialbakers Studies: Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising 18

19 Post Engagement is the Most Common Ad Objective on Facebook Distribution of Ad Objectives on Facebook Post Engagement Link Link Clicks Clicks Video Post Views Engagement Page Brand Likes Awareness Conversions Video Views Brand Awareness Conversions Reach Reach Lead Generation Other Other 48% 15% 8% 8% 7% 6% 4% 2% 2% Link Clicks Are the Most Common Ad Objective on Instagram Distribution of Ad Objectives on Instagram What Are the Most Common Ad Objectives? To help you gain a better understanding of the way marketers are advertising on Facebook and Instagram, we researched the most common ad objectives across the platforms. Our analysis of roughly 9,000 brands Ad Accounts showed that companies are leveraging the platforms mainly to drive engagement and website traffic. These goals make up over 60% of all the advertising objectives across the Ad Accounts we examined. Link Clicks Post Engagement Brand Awareness Video Views Conversions Reach Other 36% 31% 11% 9% 6% 5% 2% The third most common advertising objectives reflect the maturity of marketers who tap into Facebook and Instagram s strengths. With the increasing consumption of video content on Facebook, it makes sense that companies aim to maximize the number of views of their video ads. In the case of Instagram, marketers are smartly leveraging the platform s high engagement to increase the number of link clicks. Chart 1 Date Range: January - June 2017; Sample: 8,094 Brands Ad Accounts; Note: Ads targeting Facebook placements Chart 2 Date Range: January - June 2017; Sample: 865 Brands Ad Accounts; Note: Ads targeting Instagram Mobile placement only Socialbakers Studies: Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising 19

20 How Much Are Marketers Paying for Different Ad Objectives? There s a strong correlation between the distribution of ad objectives and the share of budget marketers invest in them. We discovered that the more common an ad objective is, the larger portion of funds it receives. Marketers have a thoughtful Instagram strategy in place, choosing to invest mostly in link clicks, post engagement, and brand awareness. This, however, isn t the case on Facebook where companies aren t taking full advantage of the platform s vast capabilities to drive sales. We can see that the most heavily funded Facebook ads are related to brand awareness, whereas objectives bringing tangible business results, such as conversions and lead generation, receive only 9% share of advertisers budget. Marketers should rethink their Facebook spending and capitalize on the platform s strengths by putting more money into conversion-related ads. Post Engagement Ads Receive the Biggest Share of Marketers Budget on Facebook Distribution of Ad Spend by Ad Objective on Facebook Post Engagement Link Clicks Video Views Page Likes Conversions Brand Awareness Reach Lead Generation Other Link Clicks Ads Receive the Biggest Share of Marketers Budget on Instagram Distribution of Ad Spend by Ad Objective on Instagram Link Clicks Post Engagement Brand Awareness Video Views Conversions Reach Other 39% 16% 10% 12% 7% 7% 4% 2% 3% 36% 27% 12% 11% 6% 6% 2% Chart 1 Date Range: January - June 2017; Sample: 8,094 Ad Accounts; Note: Ads targeting Facebook placements Chart 2 Date Range: January - June 2017; Sample: 865 Ad Accounts; Note: Ads targeting Instagram Mobile placement only Socialbakers Studies: Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising 20

21 What s the Correlation Between Engagement and Advertising Costs? We already know how much of their budget marketers are allocating in different ad objectives. Now let s look into the cost of Facebook and Instagram advertising. Ineffective Advertising Costs Marketers More on Instagram than on Facebook Correlation Between CPC and CTR on Facebook and Instagram CPC (in USD) $2.00 $1.80 $1.60 $1.40 $1.20 $1.00 $0.80 In the case of both platforms, Cost-per- Click (CPC) decreases together with the increase in Click-through Rate (CTR). This correlation is especially visible on Instagram, where ads with a CTR of 0.0% - 0.1% are 16x more expensive than ads with a CTR of 1.9% - 2.0%. On Facebook, the worst-performing ads cost nearly 10x more compared to the top-performing ones. $0.60 $0.40 $0.20 $0.00 (0,0.2] (0.2,0.4] (0.4,0.6] (0.6,0.8] (0.8,1] (1,1.2] (1.2,1.4] (1.4,1.6] (1.6,1.8] (1.8,2] CTR intervals (in %) Facebook Instagram These numbers testify to the importance of creating effective ads for decreasing your advertising costs. Marketers who want to use their budget efficiently should focus on developing better quality content that s optimized for high engagement. Chart Date Range: January - June 2017; Sample: 25,088 Instagram ads and 233,862 Facebook ads Socialbakers Studies: Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising 21

22 TIP Find out how to create appealing posts with our exclusive guide to the essentials to building great content and start producing more successful ads today! Socialbakers Studies: Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising 22

23 Facebook and Instagram are some of the most powerful digital advertising spaces, offering companies a wide range of advanced marketing capabilities. In order to unlock their full potential, businesses first need to understand that the platforms vary in many ways, including ad formats, placements, objectives, audience behaviors, etc. Because Facebook and Instagram are so different, they should always be viewed as distinct channels requiring their own unique marketing strategies. Whether you re present on Facebook, Instagram, or both, your strategy should always be founded on data analysis and measurement. Looking into some of your performance metrics, such as Fan Growth and Engagement, can provide you with plenty of valuable insights that you can utilize to upgrade your social media strategy. The Takeaway Let s say your company gained many new Followers on Instagram over the past six months. Without delving into data, you won t be able to pinpoint the growth s trigger and recreate it in the future. When did you gain most Followers? What type of ads did you publish within that period? How many interactions did they receive? These are just some of the questions you can answer with the help of data to keep successfully meeting your social media goals. However, measuring your own performance is just one side of the story. Looking at how the competition is doing will enable you to put your strategy into perspective and identify your strengths and weaknesses. For example, getting 1,000 new Instagram Followers might seem to be a lot - but what if your competitors grew their audiences by 5,000 users over the same time? Analyzing data will allow you to benchmark your performance against other companies, boost your strategy, and get ahead of the game. Socialbakers Studies: Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising 23

24 The Takeaway Social media success belongs to those who are actively analyzing their results, draw practical conclusions, and continuously optimize their performance. That s why it s crucial that companies are equipped with advanced analytics solutions, such as Socialbakers Suite. With Socialbakers, you will be able to quickly measure the effects of your advertising efforts across multiple metrics and platforms in one place. In addition, you can easily visualize your data and export it in clear reports to keep your team and company up-to-date with your latest social media results. Socialbakers Studies: Facebook vs. Instagram Advertising 24

25 Make your social media marketing smarter by measuring your performance across the most important platforms in one place.

26 Written by Marta Buryan Designed by Kaylee Littleton Social Media Insights by Mantas Ciuksys Data Insights by Michaela Branova for