New offline features have shown advertisers added value, and are encouraging an increase in marketing spending.

Hey big spender

Both Instagram and Snapchat have seen a rise in ad spending at 73% and 55% respectively, citing Snap Mapp, Geofilters, Snapchat’s AR feature and Instagram stories as the catalysts.

Instagram Stories has continued to excite brands with a year-on-year spending growth of an impressive 220% overall.

According to performance media marketing agency, Merkle, “Vertical video provides brands with a full-scale canvas to test creative. Audience-driven optimisation becomes low-risk and high-reward, with lots of opportunity to scale learning across the media mix.”

Visual content in trend

Pinterest has also seen a growth of 26% for the quarter and 33% throughout the year as a result of increased interest in visual content, thanks to new visual search tools like Lens, Shop the Looks, and Instant Ideas.

Chief Marketing officer at 4C Insights has boasted “Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will add a new level of consumer understanding and help brands be more relevant at the right time and place.”

With close to $250m in media spending from over 1000 brands managed through 4C Social, it would appear that visual marketing is not the main influence, rather its the interactive element driving customers to visualise and buy. Can you picture that?

Have you been swayed more by Snapchat and Instagram adverts? Are you surprised by the numbers? Let us know in our comment section below.