In September 2013, Unruly Media conducted a study to learn more about the video content being published on Instagram, which launched its video publishing feature in June of this year. Yesterday, on the Corporate Eye blog, I shared statistics about how many videos Fortune 500 companies are publishing on Instagram as reported by TrackMaven. Now, let’s take a look a closer look at brand videos on Instagram using the Unruly Media report.
According to the Unruly Media study, 40% of the top 1,000 most shared Instagram videos during September 2013 were published by brands. In fact, more than 80 different brands appear in the list of the top 1,000 Instagram videos developed by Unruly Media, including Instagram brand leaders like Nike.
Unruly Media shared the following key learnings from its study about Instagram video content:
- Most Shared Brand on Instagram: MTV followed by the NBA
- Most Popular Vertical on Instagram: Entertainment followed by Clothing and Apparel
- Most Shared Branded Video on Instagram: Snoopygram from Peanuts followed by FIFA 14 real-time from EA Sports
- Most Shared User-generated Videos on Instagram: Justin Bieber with 14 of the top 20 most shared user-generated videos
Applying this data to brand marketing strategic planning, it’s important to note that Unruly Media also found nine out of 10 Instagram video shares were on Facebook. Considering Facebook owns Instagram, this isn’t surprising, but it’s important for brand managers to understand that nearly all Instagram video sharing is happening on a single platform.
Furthermore, the study found that the total number of unique Instagram videos that were shared on Twitter during September was equal to 10% of the unique YouTube videos shared on Twitter during the same period of time. Remember, Instagram video hasn’t even been around for half a year yet, so that 10% is significant.
Clearly, brand marketers whose target audiences use Instagram and Facebook should be looking at publishing Instagram videos as well as at Instagram video advertising as Instagram broadens its advertising options for brands in the future.
As Phil Townend, MD EMA at Unruly Media explained in a press release, “Smart marketers are no longer measuring success based on a YouTube view count and advertisers understand that it’s people first, platform second.”
What do you think? Leave a comment and share your thoughts about Instagram and brand marketing.
Image: Nurudin Jauhari
Lucy is Editor at Corporate Eye
