As social media networks continue to evolve at a breakneck speed, so does the demographic of users on the respective platforms. We looked at the data and pulled together current 2016 trends with early predictions about where social media users will go in 2017.
Key points
- Facebook isn’t dead, yet. Millennials are still on Facebook, they’re just using the platform in a different way than their older counterparts. Rather than sharing personal stories and updates, they’re sharing third-party content.
- Instagram ads bring big brand awareness. 97% of branded Instagram campaigns have generated a significant increase in ad recall. This is expected to grow even more as Instagram ad targeting becomes even more advanced.
- Video will dominate. Video content will be responsible for 85% of search traffic in the US by 2019. There is already a massive rise in video content, especially on Facebook.
- Snapchat might revolutionize ads. Leaked documents from the company show Snapchat is looking to capitalize on their large, young demographic. This includes image recognition technology to introduce a new round of advertisements that encourage users to share a brand’s message through user-generated content.
Facebook’s users are older, or are they?
The chart above illustrates five major social networks and the age distribution associated with each. Due to a lack of public statistics, Snapchat isn’t included in the above graph, but a plethora of information is given about them and their usage later in this post.
With 1.5 billion users each month, Facebook continues to dominate the social media landscape in terms of users and engagement, despite the rumors that millennials are leaving for more popular social networks. If fact, despite Facebook’s reputation for being a social network for the older generations, 82% of Internet users aged 18 to 29 are active on Facebook in the United States. The difference is that millennials are sharing less personal stories on Facebook, opting to do so where they feel they have more privacy, such as on Instagram or Snapchat. This doesn’t mean they aren’t sharing, though. In fact, millennials love to share content they find fun or interesting, such as Tasty’s cooking videos, some of which are watched over 80 million times.
However, We Are Social found that that some young people are leaving Facebook altogether to escape the constant stream of irrelevant marketing messages found in their feeds. This highlights that marketers should focus on telling stories worth sharing, and curating content their audience finds relevant without disrupting their digital experience.
Instagram ads bring big brand awareness
In 2017, Instagram ads will be on the rise. Since its launch in 2015, there have been over 500 global advertising campaigns on the platform, and Instagram now has 200,000 advertisers. In fact, eMarketer predicts Instagram ads will outsell Google and Twitter by 2017, earning the company $2.81 billion in advertising revenue, and Credit Suisse calculates the company will be worth $5.3 billion by the end of 2017.
