Instagram and Facebook See Decline in Publisher Engagement, Says Study
According to a survey conducted by Digiday+ Research, Instagram is slowly making publishers lose interest in it. Meta’s two social media apps, Instagram and Facebook, were trending upwards last year in terms of ad spend and usage, but now they are seeing a decline as publishers have started taking a step back from them.
The survey found that Facebook isn’t being deemed as important among publishers which isn’t surprising at all but the surprising thing is that Instagram’s ad spend and usage have also decreased a lot. 86% of the publishers said that they have posted content on Instagram in Q3 of 2024 but it is a drop from 91% who said the same in last year. 55% of publishers said that they have purchased ads on Instagram last month, which is a drop from 61% last year. In 2022, 46% publishers had purchased ads on Instagram.
Facebook is continuously losing publishers. 91% publishers said that they will have posted content on Facebook in 2024 and 2023. This is a drop from 99% in 2022 and 95% in 2021. Facebook’s ad spend is also decreasing from 75% purchased ads in 2022 to 67% publishers purchasing ads on Facebook this year.
The survey also found out that publishers are also changing their publishing frequency on Facebook and Instagram by shifting from posting daily content to posting weekly content. 66% of the publishers surveyed said that they post content everyday on Facebook in Q3 of 2024, which is a decrease from 73% last year. 85% of the publishers used to post daily content on Facebook in 2021. 52% of the publishers said that they post content daily on Instagram in Q3 of 2024 with 45% saying they post content weekly on the platform.
Even with this decreasing interest, publishers are still investing to create original content on Instagram and Facebook. 32% of the publishers didn’t invest at all on Facebook last year but it has decreased to 20% this year. 27% of the publishers say that their company invests in content for Facebook this year, which is an increase from 21% last year. 44% publishers said that they have invested in original content for Instagram in Q3 of 2024, which is an increase from 39% last year.
Publishers think that Facebook and Instagram are no longer valuable in terms of revenue. In 2022, 38% of the publishers say that Facebook has value which increased to 52% last year. But now it has again decreased to 46% of publishers saying that Facebook is valuable. Only 10% said that Facebook isn’t valuable at all. Only a small fraction (3%) publishers believe that Facebook isn’t good for branding. This year, 52% said that Facebook is good for branding, which is down from 62% in 2023 and 66% the year prior.
Similarly, 47% of the publishers said that Instagram is extremely valuable for driving up revenues last year, but now only 38% of the publishers think so. 22% said that Instagram is not very valuable which is an increase from 7% last year. No one from the survey said that Instagram is not a valuable platform for branding this year. 86% of publishers said that Instagram is extremely valuable for branding in 2023 which fell to 68% this year.
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