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The first online advertisement, a banner ad that encouraged people on a website to use telecommunications provider AT&T over competitors, appeared in 1994. Since then, digital marketing has exploded to become one of the fastest-growing industries of all time. By the end of 2022, global spending on digital advertising reached around $549.51 billion for the year. This has steadily increased, and analysts expect it to reach $870.85 billion by 2027.
Social media is responsible for a large number of digital marketing activities. Meta, in particular, is front and center in this sector, with Facebook and Instagram raking in astonishing ad revenue. Instagram (or Insta) alone is responsible for more than $50.58 billion in marketing revenue annually and is set to grow as social media appeals to a wider range of demographics and users.
However, having companies and brands spend large sums of money on ad spend doesn’t necessarily mean it is worth it. Since the accurate measure of whether advertising works is a conversion to sales, subscriptions, or registrations, let’s dive deep into Instagram advertising and see if they are worth spending money on.
Before answering the question of whether Instagram ads are worth it, let’s first discuss why you should choose Instagram over other social platforms like TikTok (which is in the process of being banned), Facebook, or YouTube.
The reasons include some of the platform’s features and the benefits associated with using it. In some cases, these may not be unique to Instagram but are still pertinent reasons why advertising may be worthwhile.
The first reason is Instagram’s reach. Although the platform is “only” the fourth-largest social media platform, it can still reach an incredible number of people due to its more than 5.6 billion registered users worldwide.
Of these 5.6 billion accounts, MAU (monthly active users) register at more than 2 billion. This means at least 35% of users use their account actively throughout the month. While Insta’s DAU (daily active user) count has no official number, it is known that the app ranks third overall in this category—even beating popular messaging app WhatsApp.
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In addition to Instagram’s influence, the app is fully integrated into the Meta Business Suite. This management console is accessible to any business or official page registered on Facebook and Instagram.
Content creators can schedule and publish posts, stories, and reels from this console. It also provides a single place to respond to messages and comments, invite others to follow you, and manage your advertising (although this can also be done in the Instagram Ads Manager).
Another feature found on Instagram and within the Meta Business Suite is advanced insights and metrics. These details are vital to anybody running paid advertising as they show each ad’s exact reach and effectiveness.
From this data, you can rerun ad campaigns, see what isn’t working, suspend campaigns before wasting money, and even see what demographic responds to your Instagram ads. All this information allows you to run more effective ads during your next campaign.
For the cost-conscious, Instagram is a no-brainer choice as an advertising platform due to its comprehensive budgeting options. When starting a campaign through the Meta Business Suite or Ads Manager, there are many configurable options to amend to your liking and pocket.
Among these are the total campaign budget and daily budget. Insta will tell you your estimated reach and effectiveness when you enter your budget amount to make selecting a budget more manageable. You’ll know to increase your budget if this reach is less than you’d like. The inverse is also true if you will reach more people than necessary.
Alongside the ability to set detailed budgets that will automatically stop campaigns if they run high, Instagram is also relatively cheap to advertise on. This means you won’t have to try to get extra credit by contacting a phone bill provider available in Canada to stretch your budget.
The primary measure used on the platform to calculate cost is the CPC (cost per click) on a specific ad. CPC is the total amount paid to achieve the platform showing your ad to someone intrigued enough to click on it.
The average CPC of Insta ads is between $0.00 and $0.25, which is comparable to other platforms like Facebook and allows you to reach thousands of people relatively cheaply.
Advertising targeting is a feature of almost all digital advertising, regardless of the platform. That said, Meta has made targeting specific consumers a fine art and has extensive tooling available to help you specify exactly who you want to see your ads.
This can be done based on age, race, location, gender, and even what interests the person is listed in. Instagram also has a targeting assistant that will recommend the best targeting parameters for your ad, which will likely grant you the most significant reach based on how much you’d like to spend.
Engagement is one of the most essential metrics when advertising or just posting on social media. This is when your post, reel, or story receives likes, comments, messages, shares, clicks, mentions, or saves. Each of these occurs when a user “engages” with your content, hence its name.
Aside from TikTok, Instagram is known as the social with the highest engagement rate among users, even beating X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook. As of 2022, the average post-engagement rate was 0.6%.
Although that might sound a bit low, considering the platform is home to over 40 billion posts, it is by no means terrible. This engagement rate is still significantly higher than that of Facebook (0.15%) and X (0.05%).
The platform has 5.6 billion registered users, more than 2 billion of whom are MAU (monthly active users).
Yes, Instagram provides in-depth insights and metrics that you can use to assess the effectiveness of your campaign. These can be accessed in the app or via the Meta Business Suite.
No. The cost of advertising on Instagram is similar to running campaigns on Facebook. The platform’s average CPC (cost-per-click) is between $0.00 and $0.25. This makes Insta one of the cheaper platforms on which to advertise.
Considering all the above features, the simple and direct answer to whether advertising on Instagram is worth it is yes. The platform is incredibly user-friendly and has instituted great features for advertisers that make running Instagram ads campaigns easier and more efficient.
In addition, the platform hosts a massive gathering of consumers, high levels of engagement, and cheap pricing, making it a marketing dream. And one does not need to look further for proof of this than the number of companies worldwide that actively use Instagram for their ad campaigns.