Report: Social Media Marketers Finding New Avenues on Instagram and Facebook

Although social media marketers are not entirely focused on Facebook and Instagram news feeds, they are not giving up on these channels entirely, according to new research.

Socialbakers recently published the “Social Media Trends Report,” gathering data from the fourth quarter of 2019. Data showed that since December 2018, marketers’ spend on the Facebook news feed decreased from 64.1% to 58.3% one year later. During the same period, their spend on the Instagram feed at the end of 2019 was higher than the previous year (20.3% vs. 19.7%), but had decreased since reaching 21.7% in July 2019.

However, the percentage of marketers’ spend on Instagram Explore grew to 1.32% over the course of Q4 2019, suggesting that this may be a new avenue. Over the last year, ad spend on Facebook Marketplace also grew from 0.72% in December 2018 to 1.31% at the end of 2019. This statistic suggests that Marketplace could be a new channel for Facebook marketers.

Social Media Marketing and Website Visits

Despite the challenges associated with social media marketing, previous research suggests that marketers will likely continue to use this tactic, if only to drive website visits for their companies.

Merkle released its “Digital Marketing Report” for Q3 2019, and statistics suggested that the average share of visits to company sites produced by social media remained steady between Q2 and Q3 of 2019 at 4%. Compared to the previous year, social media visit share rose one percentage point, suggesting that it continues to grow as a channel.

Visits to company sites driven by Facebook grew 23% year-over-year, while visits to business websites driven by Instagram increased 22% year-over-year.