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Report: Video ads on Instagram are more common and getting longer

Average video ad length jumped from 15 seconds in January to 25 in June.

Greg Sterling on August 23, 2016 at 6:05 pm

App marketing and data company Sensor Tower just released its Q2 “Ad Intelligence Data Digest.” The report presents mobile advertising trends on social media sites, and Instagram in particular.

The report finds that one out of every four ads on Instagram is now a video ad. This coincides with Facebook’s effort to make “video ads” more broadly accessible to small businesses and in emerging markets. There has also been a general market push toward mobile video ads.

The analysis also discovered that the average duration of video ads on Instagram had grown from 15 seconds in January 2016 to 25 seconds in June, a time bump of 67 percent.

The leading advertiser category on Instagram was Games, followed by Shopping, Entertainment, Social Networking and “Lifestyle,” in that order. Below is a comparison of the top mobile advertisers on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. This set of findings is the most striking of the report.

On Facebook, the top advertisers are almost entirely games. On Instagram, there’s a mix of games, shopping and entertainment. On Pinterest, it’s a very different story: Retailers and shopping apps dominate. Games are absent.

Sensor Tower top advertisers on social Q2

About The Author

Greg Sterling

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog, Screenwerk, about connecting the dots between digital media and real-world consumer behavior. He is also VP of Strategy and Insights for the Local Search Association. Follow him on Twitter or find him at Google+.