The Evolution and Growth of Instagram Influencer Marketing (Infographic)

The Instagram influencer marketing industry has grown in rocket speed over the last couple of years, and of course, there is a reason behind it – it generates incredible results.

In fact, since 2011, Instagram has been one of the fastest growing social media platforms, and during just six months, Instagram was able to add 100 million users, and it doesn’t show any signs of the growth slowing down just yet. This just goes to show how incredibly powerful the platform is. Both user wise and marketing wise.

Because so many people’s attention is put on Instagram, it goes without saying that brands want to be seen in those places. And because influencers have more trust, reach and credibility than brands, it’s an obvious choice for brands of spreading their brand message with the help of trusted individuals – influencers.

By 2019, Instagram influencer marketing is expected to become a $2 billion industry, while the influencer marketing as a whole is expected to become a $5-10 billion industry by 2020.

One explanation to the growth of influencer marketing is the decline of TV and display ads. And knowing the fact that influencer marketing is able to generate much better results than the TV and display ads thanks to the fact that the brands can target their audience in a much more efficient way, it’s not exactly surprising that many brands are moving their focus from display ads to influencer marketing.

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Who is using influencer marketing?

There are not just small businesses and startups who are implementing influencer marketing and are taking advantage of the incredible benefits it has.

While large corporates are slow and often have a hard time adapting new strategies, some have implemented influencer marketing on Instagram successfully.

Some examples of brands are Nike, Gap, Estée Lauder, H&M, and Samsung.

The infographic below brings up conclusions they have drawn based on the hashtags #AD, #Sponsored, #Spon, #SP and in the past year, an increase of 4.8 million posts of these hashtags compared to the years prior has been made. While that might not be a crystal clear sign of an increased amount of sponsored posts, influencer marketing has definitely been a part in affecting the increase of that number.

The study found that 58% of the sponsored posts came from accounts with over 1000 followers. This means that 42% of accounts using those hashtags had under 1000 followers, and people with a following of less than 1K are never classified as influencers. So that leaves us with 58% who might be influencers, yet a part of them probably aren’t. if you remove the 42% from the 4,792,033 posts recorded over 12 months that included those hashtags, you have 2,788,963 posts that have been made using one of the hashtags mentioned above. Yet, that does not mean that all 2,7 million posts are sponsored.

Below is an infographic presenting statistics on the evolution and growth of influencer marketing on Instagram.