Beware the Insta Apocalypse
Showpo’s chief marketing officer Mark Baartse foresees a major change in the way businesses interact with Instagram – going so far as to predict the current expectation of free influencer reach may come to an end.
Who remembers back to the halcyon days pre-2013 when Facebook brand pages had organic reach comparable to people? Those days are long gone, with organic reach for business plummeting to a single digit %. Facebook is an almost entirely paid channel. This simple algorithm change made Facebook billions of dollars. Those who built their house on rented ground found themselves in hot water.
Instagram could change its algorithm
The rule of online publishing is advertisers give money, publishers give reach, control, and data on the people reached. Facebook did give advertisers a lot of data and control in exchange for their ad dollars.
Right now, savvy brands are getting significant organic reach via Instagram, all for free through their corporate Instagram accounts – just look at Nike’s 85m followers. Additionally, brands routinely pay influencers large sums of money to tap into their organic reach. Facebook gets no money at all from these transactions.
Brilliant piece Mark, hits the nail on the head. Completely naive to think that Instagram will allow brands to access huge reach via influencers without getting a cut for much longer
Great piece crystal balling what some future changes can look like
Solid read Mark. Diversifying channels, from a publisher point of view, (which means dedicating resources to it) is much easier said than done, especially when advertisers, often represented by ’boutique agencies’ who don’t really understand to begin with, have no interest in these mediums when it comes to campaign deliverables. Unfortunately, it’s all still an impressions game.
Instagramming coffee to making it. Good.
Hey James. Thanks for the comments. Yes there’s some boutique agencies out there who are narrow in scope or don’t understand the bigger picture. But then, it’s up to the advertiser to brief them properly, and to develop the broader strategy. “Diversify” rarely wins a pitch.