Singapore – Despite an overall decline in overall engagement on Instagram, the platform still delivers the highest engagement rates for brands compared to Facebook and Twitter. More specifically, brand usage of the platform’s Reels features has risen to 86% this year, according to the latest data from unified customer experience platform Emplifi.
According to the data, despite only 11% of these ads are Reels placements—still, 87% of brands used Instagram Reels for ad placements, at least once in Q2 2023, representing a 26% increase year-over-year.
The rise in Instagram Reels usage amongst brands is also amidst Reels engagement trending downward for the last five quarters, dropping 30% year-over-year in Q2 2023. The competition for engagement on the platform is steep, not to mention the recent deprioritization of Reels by Meta, Instagram’s parent company.
“These data points make clear how important it is for brands to diversify their social content, embracing more than one channel for their video marketing efforts,” the report stated.
Meanwhile, in comparison to popular platform TikTok, Instagram Reels is still outperforming TikTok content when comparing median reach, median interactions, and median video views. Meanwhile, TikTok wins in terms of median engagement rates when compared to Instagram Reels.
In addition, while Instagram Reels are exploding, Facebook Reels are not seeing the same traction. In APAC, Facebook Live Video dominates all other video content on the platform, earning nearly four-times the number of interactions compared to static video posts.
The report also noted that Facebook Reels have not been around as long as Instagram Reels, having been released two years after Instagram launched its most popular video format. As more brands cross-post their Instagram Reel content to Facebook, marketers may see a shift in engagement.
Lastly, with all the recent changes happening at Twitter, the platform has been a hot topic among social media marketers and advertisers. For APAC brands wanting to make the most of their activity on the social network, Emplif’s data found that Tweets containing GIFs earned 2.4-times as many interactions as those with links and 1.85-times more than text-based status updates.
Zarnaz Arlia, chief marketing officer at Emplifi, said, “Because the social media landscape is evolving and changing at such a rapid pace, it’s crucial marketers have access to insights that can help them earn the biggest bang for their marketing bucks. A key insight from this report is that despite an ongoing decline in engagement on Instagram last quarter, the platform still delivers the highest engagement rates for brands compared to Facebook and Twitter.”
She added, “It is time marketers fully embrace their video efforts, and that means everything from Instagram Reels and Facebook Live Video to TikTok content and even GIFs on Twitter. Short-form video is exploding and the brands that lean into this trend will gain a major competitive edge. As a leading customer engagement platform, we know that implementing a successful video strategy takes time. That’s why we devote so much of our efforts to creating these reports and sharing this data—we want to help marketers by giving them a headstart on developing social media strategies that will deliver measurable impact.”
