For all the negative publicity that Facebook has received lately, it is still the juggernaut of social media platforms. Facebook, of course, also owns Instagram, which is the dominant number two in the social media world.
Here are some of the latest statistics about Facebook and Instagram that may surprise you.
As of mid-this-year, Facebook has more than 2.41 billion monthly active users worldwide. This is an increase of 8 percent in Facebook’s monthly active users year-on-year.
What is even more staggering is that 66 percent of these monthly active users log onto Facebook every day. I’m one of them. If you’re like me, we’re known as “daily active users”, and there are 1.59 billion of us around the world.
Not only is there a huge number of monthly active users, and daily active users – the amount of time we spend on Facebook is impressive too. According to Infodocket the average time spent on Facebook each visit is 20 minutes. (And many people visit more than once per day.)
This consistency of people using Facebook very regularly, for long periods of time, shows just how “sticky” the platform is. Combine this with the powerful marketing options Facebook provides, and you can see why Facebook is such a powerful platform for advertising.
Facebook isn’t the perfect platform for all audiences though. For my teenage kids, since I’m on there, and their grandparents are on there, it doesn’t exactly scream “cool place to hang out”! Which is why Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012. And they sure picked a winner.
Instagram is now the second biggest social media platform in the world with more than 1 billion users using Instagram every single month. Out of these users, more than 500 million use the platform every day.
This is where the new generation hangs out. Seventy-one percent of Instagram users around the world are under the age of 35. And the split between male and female is almost 50/50.
Bringing it closer to home, social media statistics provider NapoleonCat reported that New Zealand had 2.9 million Facebook users in June and 1.6 million Instagram users.
From an advertising point of view, Instagram and Facebook ads are both run from the Facebook ads management platform, and when you create advertising on Facebook by default it will run on Instagram as well.
When Facebook first listed on the stock market in 2012 they didn’t yet run advertising in the Facebook mobile app – ads were only on the desktop version of Facebook. Times have certainly changed. According to Facebook, mobile advertising revenue accounted for 94 percent of advertising revenue for Q2 2019.
So, what does all this mean for you?
First, it means that for many businesses Facebook and Instagram could form an important part of your digital marketing strategy. However, just because there are large numbers of people there, it doesn’t mean it will be easy to run successful advertising campaigns. With the huge volume of people there is also a huge volume of content. Making social media advertising work well requires a clear plan and great execution.
It’s also important to note that Facebook and Instagram aren’t right for every business. Before diving in, I recommend getting personalised advice for your business from a digital marketing advisor.
Second, mobile is king. For advertising to succeed on these platforms, and turn viewers into leads or ecommerce sales, you must have landing pages and a full enquiry process that works well on mobile devices. Most sites are built to be “responsive” nowadays (which means they look good on desktops as well as mobiles), but you’d be surprised to see just how often we find enquiry processes that become awkward on a mobile device. So always test your enquiry processes on a mobile device, from start to finish. When everything works beautifully, it can help your bottom line look beautiful too.
