Social media has grown to be a central component of any marketing strategy with the unique ability of reaching billions and combine the benefits of scale and targeting.
To assess social advertising growth in Q3 of 2017, 4C Insights analysed a representative sample which included over a thousand individual brands that amounted to over $250 million in media spend through 4C Social. Some of the social media channels for ads that were analysed in the study included Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Snapchat.
Some key takeaways from 4C state of social report included :
- Facebook ad spend grew 27%.
- Q3 was monumental for Instagram, with ad spend up 55%.
- Instagram Stories continues to draw in brands, generating 220% Year-on-Year spend growth.
- Snapchat ad spend soared 73% in Q3 as new offline features (e.g. Snap Map) brought added value to advertisers.
- Twitter ad spend grew 26% for the quarter, with the platform securing a place in media plans for live moment amplification.
“We’re seeing a lot of ad spend being concentrated on video ads and video content in general. Snap is nearly 100% of video content, which is a direct correlation to how users are using and interacting with the platform. As a brand who is trying to use Snap or other social media channels to get in front of and engage with their audiences, they have to make sure their presence feels as organic as possible by mimicking the way users post and engage with content on each platform,” said 4C’s CMO, Aaron Goldman.
He also added that a key driver for the growing social media ad spend is effective targeting. Social media gives brands the ability to define and scale their target audiences using massive external data sources at their disposal to fine tune their targeting.
