Instagram doubles monthly active advertisers to over 2 million

Facebook-owned photo-sharing platform Instagram on 26 September announced it has doubled its advertiser base in the past six months to reach over two million monthly active advertisers.

"Our business community has grown to two million advertisers, up from one million advertisers back in March. People are spending more time than ever producing and exploring content, especially mobile video", the company said in a statement.

The time spent watching video on Instagram is up more than 80 per cent year-over-year (YoY) while the number of videos produced per day has increased by 4X from last year.

With the introduction of mobile video formats like Instagram "Stories" and "Live", businesses are finding more opportunities to connect with their audiences.

In the last month, over 120 million Instagrammers visited a website, received directions, called, emailed or direct-messaged to learn about a business.

"Instagram has undergone more changes in the last year than during the previous five. We introduced Instagram "Stories" -- a new way for businesses to share everyday moments -- and the use of video exploded", the company wrote in a blog post.

Currently, the app has eight million businesses using business profiles and the biggest adoption comes from the US, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia and Britain.

Instagram introduced face filters for live video broadcasts through the app last week.

Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012 and the photo-sharing platform has seen its user base grow to 700 million monthly active users (MAU) globally.

-IANS