Did you know that Facebook owns Instagram and Whatsapp? Here’s why that matters to your social media marketing.
Facebook owns Instagram and some other stats:
According to the results of a recent survey done by The Verge, few people are aware that Facebook owns Instagram. Here’s what The Verge’s survey found:
47% of people are aware that Google owns Youtube
38% of people are aware that Facebook owns Instagram
29% of people are aware that Facebook owns Whatsapp
12% of people are aware that Amazon owns Twitch
It’s been 8 years since Facebook successfully acquired Instagram – so it’s very interesting to read that people still aren’t aware of the connection between the two social media giants.
In 2019, Facebook made the effort to make people more aware of which apps they own by slightly rebranding their interfaces. It was as simple as “Instagram from Facebook” and “Whatsapp from Facebook”. Subtle changes = you probably didn’t even notice.
Why does this matter?
In order for us to be a successful social media agency in Vancouver, it’s important for us to have a complex understanding of all the social media platforms and how they work. As part of our work, we create paid campaigns and strategies for our clients on Facebook and Instagram.
Facebook currently has roughly 2.7 billion active users worldwide, so the opportunity for your business to reach its target audience is massive!
How Facebook ads work with Instagram
Facebook creates an advertising profile for each user by harvesting information – not just basic information from your profile, but interests, behaviours and connections. Facebook also gathers information on what you do on its family of apps (including Instagram and Whatsapp).
From a marketer’s perspective, this means you can target a very specific audience using this data to generate sales, traffic, leads and more, as well as increasing your brand’s recognition by just using Facebook ads across a variety of platforms (again, including Instagram and Whatsapp).
The Facebook Ads Manager platform acts as a one-stop-shop for setting up paid campaigns that run on Facebook and Instagram. From here, you can access Instagram and product catalogues.
Let’s talk demographics
OK, now time for us to consider your target audience and the industry you work in. Is it more visual, or information based? Are your products better suited to an older customer? Male or female?
It’s important to set different targeting goals for each channel: Facebook vs. Instagram. The user demographics for each channel vary greatly. More than half of Instagram users are 34 and younger, whereas Facebook’s fastest-growing age group is 65+, but is still prominently used by Millennials and GenXers.
So make sure your target audience and ad artwork are contextual to each other. Otherwise, your ads will fall short and be nonsensical. The best ads blend into your feed so well, you don’t even notice they’re ads.
In summary: Why it matters
The big reason why it matters, that Facebook and Instagram are essentially one and the same, is that for advertising purposes, you can seamlessly create and deploy campaigns to each platform, from one central location (Ads Manager). Ads Manager harvests data from your target demographic based on their behaviour on both platforms.
Pretty cool.
