According to a recent story from Mobile Marketer, Instagram influencer engagement has dramatically decreased over the past year.
Citing a study conducted by InfluencerDB, the story said that “Instagram influencers have seen their engagement rates hover near all-time lows as the Facebook-owned app becomes over-crowded with sponsored posts.”
The drop-off has been stark: engagement rates on sponsored posts fell to “2.4% in Q1 2019 from 4% three years earlier,” and the “rate for non-sponsored posts slid to 1.9% from 4.5% for the comparable periods.”
And it appears to be an across-the-board thing. Every single industry category is in decline, and even travel influencers — “who typically have the highest engagement rates” — are rocking a 4.5% engagement rate in 2019, barely half of what it was in 2018.
In what the story is calling “good news,” it appears that sponsored posts are still outperforming regular posts, engagement-wise — which means that money is still theoretically available — but it was also noted that feeds are “cluttered with sponsored posts,” and the “sheer number [of those posts] may be decreasing their overall engagement effectiveness.”
Will that be enough to topple the whole confounding economy? Who knows — Instagram doesn’t seem to think so — but it’s not great news for the Content™ & Tummy Tea crowd.
You can read more about it at Mobile Marketer.
