According to Bloomberg, an anonymous source has revealed Instagram brought in more than $20 billion worth of ad revenue in 2019 alone. Generating more profit than YouTube, the sums from Instagram made up more than a quarter of Facebook’s ad income for the year.
For the very first time, YouTube’s ad revenue has been released by Alphabet Inc. Despite taking an impressive $15.1billion last year, it’s noticeably less than that of Instagram, which raised more than a third extra. Instagram’s ad revenue was provided to Bloomberg by a source who wished to keep their identity secret, due to the information not being readily available to the public.
What’s more, as Engadget points out, Instagram likely has a higher profit margin, given that the platform doesn’t share ad revenue profits with content creators in the way that YouTube does. That’s despite the increase in adverts on the site, with users reporting sponsored posts cropping up more frequently on their feed, with fewer posts from users they follow in between each advert. It’s a great feat for Facebook though, when we bear in mind Instagram had no model in place for revenue when it was acquired by its now-parent company back in 2012.
At a time when many speculate whether video content will replace photo content, these figures come as a reassurance to photographers that there is still much life left in photography yet.
Lead image courtesy energepic.com via Pexels.