From the daily news they read, to the behavior when it comes to online shopping, marketing Saas company Socialbakers has already disclosed how Mexicans are social media enthusiasts. Hitting straight at their decisions, social media is a major influencer for this Latin American country, and as those apps evolve, so does the trends to watch.
Based on the fifty top brands profiles in social networks, Socialbakers has released this Tuesday, 11, its latest Social Media Trends Report 2019 Q4, showing the growing importance of Instagram over Facebook, the rising trend on videos in portrait orientation, and more. As for Mexico, a few other key takeaways deserves a closer look. Check below:
1. Instagram is stealing the show from its parent company… but
For the first time, the total audience on Instagram exceeded Facebook’s total audience. “There has been talks about this for some time, but now it is official. When it comes to the profiles of networks of the most important brands, Instagram has a larger audience than Facebook,” said Socialbakers CEO Yuval Ben-Itzhak in the official press release. “That growth is no surprise. What was unexpected during Q4 2019 was the relative decrease in engagement during the holiday season at the end of the year. This is a clear sign that brands need a deeper understanding of the type of content that really connects with their audiences, and how to deliver them in a faster way,” he further added.
In addition, the total interactions on Instagram were almost 20 times larger than those of Facebook – which means that, although the top 50 brands published more posts on Facebook, the engagement with those posts did not reach the same numbers as on Instagram.
But when it comes to advertising investment – as much as the marketing budget for Instagram is currently increasing, the Facebook feed format is still the leader in ad expenses. In Mexico, in particular, Facebook is still the sweetheart of advertisers, even with this platform reaching virtually the same number of interactions as Instagram does.
2. It seems that there’s room for both
As already noticed in previous years, and especially for Mexico, Socialbakers report once again confirmed that the e-commerce segment is the one with the highest number of interactions on Facebook, while on Instagram, the fashion industry holds the first place.
However, despite attempts to attract consumers during the holiday season, the relative interactions of posts on both social networks were lower in Q4-2019 in comparison to the previous quarter. While fashion – the most relevant category on Instagram – decreased 19.4%; e-commerce, the most important one on Facebook, dropped by 9.6%.
From technology and computer services to event organizers and more – the services sector, on the other hand, has proved to be the success story, since interactions on this category increased by 66.7% on Instagram, compared to Q3-2019. On Facebook, that same category ranked fourth, with 7.6% of the total interactions, after not appearing among the first eight positions in the previous quarter.
3. Cheers to new streaming service Quibi: portrait orientation gains ground
While there is no consense on whether users prefer portrait-oriented videos over landscape-oriented ones, Socialbakers’data is shedding some light on the matter: currently, about 70% of the videos in brand profiles on Facebook are recorded horizontally – but according to what the report has found, vertical videos work best in every way. For videos of less than 30 seconds, the most popular video length, portrait format videos were fully watched 29.9% of the time, while landscape-oriented videos were seen from beginning to end 22.2% of the time.
4. Influencer Marketing doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon
Confirming to be a rising trend, during the last quarter of 2019, the number of influencers who used the hashtag #Ad (or local languages equivalents) in their publications, increased by 90.5%.
Effective influencer campaigns were analyzed by Socialbakers’ report disclosing the global brand profile that had the best influencer marketing efficiency in Q4 2019: Virgin Media Ireland, which had a cooperation efficiency of 99,017.17x.
Mexican payments fintech Clip, that raised about $20 million from Softbank in early 2019, was also featured, ranking fifth among the brands that carried out the most effective influencer campaign in the period.
Founded in 2012, Clip offers a mobile credit card reader that matches with smartphones. Mexican stores such as cafes, corner stores, and street vendors have joined the platform in a simple and cheaper way to accept cards instead of cash only.
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5. Instagram Stories are catching the eyes of advertisers
Although Facebook Feed is still the leader when it comes to advertising investment, Instagram Stories sustains a fast-paced growth – and Mexico plays a leading role in this trend. For the first time, the format reached 10% of advertising investment in the second half of 2019. Overall, investment in Instagram Stories increased by 40% in the last year and 91% in the last two years.
Other advertising investment trends include the rise of Instagram Explore and Facebook Marketplace as a target for advertisers’ guidelines. In its first five months, the percentage of advertising investment in Instagram Explore increased to 1.32%. And during the last year, spending on Facebook Marketplace grew from 0.72% in December 2018, to 1.31% at the end of 2019, an increase of more than 80%.
