Instagram for Influencers

This data was originally featured in the August 21, 2024 newsletter found here:INBOX INSIGHTS, August 21, 2024: Internal and External Audiences, Instagram for Influencers

In this week’s Data Diaries, we dig into the second set of snapshots from Crowdtangle, the now-decommissioned data utility from Meta.

Crowdtangle was unique among data provider companies in that they provided large scale data exports. Though the services they’ve offered have diminished over time, they were still the best way to get high quality, high quantity data from Meta for Facebook and Instagram.

With last week’s cessation of service, every company wanting to do large-scale data analysis will need to find alternate solutions that will inevitably be less convenient, which is too bad. Our state of Instagram and state of Facebook reports will likely be suspended for a while until we determine whether it’s feasible to produce them with alternate data sources.

So with that, here’s our final (for now) state of Instagram analysis for influencers:

Over the past year and a half, influencer performance on Instagram declined an incredible 50%, from 0.6% at the beginning of 2023 to 0.4% as of last week. A portion of this may be due to algorithmic changes; Instagram’s Adam Mosseri made a number of announcements this year about removing the influence of accounts that primarily repost other, non-original content.

As we saw with brands, video really took off in 2024. It’s the dominant media type for both brands and influencers, which makes logical sense. Meta has been trying to chip away at TikTok’s influence for years, so letting video flourish would be the easiest way to do that.

The key takeaway right now is that whether you’re a brand or an influencer, Instagram is a video-first channel. If you want a chance at being favored by its recommendation engine, you need to be publishing video on it.

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