Survey: Digital Marketers Show Most Interest in Advertising on Instagram

Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram continue to grow in popularity as digital advertising channels, but which networks lead the pack?

In an effort to gauge how marketers are utilizing social platforms, Ad Age and RBC Capital Markets recently surveyed 1,600 marketing professionals. The majority (64 percent) said that they were most interested in advertising on Instagram. About 37 percent said the same about Snapchat, and 119 respondents said they intend to “significantly” or “modestly” increase their spending on the platform in the coming months.

In contrast, 461 respondents said the same about Facebook, while 450 marketers stated that they will “significantly” or “modestly” boost their spending on Google.

Ad Age and RBC Capital Markets scored these platforms on a 1-to-8 scale (8 being the best) for their ROI as well. Google (6.98) and Facebook (6.72) were at the top of the list, performing nearly twice as well as Snapchat (3.43).

Survey respondents claimed that increased competition from Instagram, poor targeting, small user engagement, and difficulty measuring KPIs contributed to lower ROI for Snapchat.

Marketing and Social Network Engagement

At the end of 2016, SUMO Heavy conducted a survey to determine how much customers and prospects engage on social networks. About 72 percent said that they used sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter on a daily basis. Forty-seven percent stated that they utilize these platforms multiple times per day.

Facebook led the pack in terms of use, with the majority of respondents (88 percent) saying they used it regularly. Bart Mroz, co-founder and CEO of SUMO Heavy, says he expects this trend to continue through 2017.

“Its influence is due to the incredible number of people — more than 1 billion, or one out of every seven humans on earth — who use it regularly,” says Mroz. “While I don’t see this changing anytime soon, different social platforms have different use cases and target audiences, so they can be equally effective if used correctly.”