Sponsored Content on Instagram – Survey Report

In the end of last year, Instagram opens up sponsored posts to advertisers. Promoted posts appear in users’ feeds and look just like organic content, though they are labelled as “sponsored”. Users can hide posts they don’t like, and give feedback about ones they find less interesting. Since Instagram rolled out its advertising platform in Indonesia, there are pros and cons regarding to this matter. Therefore, recently Jakpat has conducted a survey in order to see the reception and perception of Indonesian Instagram users toward the sponsored content. This survey involved 353 respondents who currently live in 10 big cities of Indonesia, including Jakarta, Bandung, Semarang, Yogyakarta, Surabaya, Bali, Lombok, Medan, Balikpapan, and Makassar. For the further notes, Jakpat’s respondents in this survey are Indonesian smart-phone users who are also Instagram users, with a range of age from 17 to 37 year-old. Regarding to this survey, first of all, we found that there are 76% of respondents who are aware of sponsored content on Instagram.

Most of our respondents have had their Instagram accounts since 2012 (note: had Instagram since 2012: 12%; 2013: 18%; 2014: 26%; 2015: 25%), which means that they are familiar with Instagram since before the sponsored content being rolled out. Therefore, it’s appropriate to ask them regarding to this matter. Next, we would like to see the frequency of how often the respondents find sponsored content on their Instagram’s feeds. Apparently, almost half of them (47%) admit that they often find sponsored content on their timeline, but 21% of them state that they rarely find it. Furthermore, there are 19% of respondents who admit that they find sponsored content on their feeds very often, while 7% of them argue that they always find it everytime they access their Instagram account. However, there are also 6% of respondents who state that they find sponsored content on their timeline very rarely.

Regarding to what kind of account the respondents usually find posting the sponsored content, most of them (60%) state that it’s the official account of a certain product, while more than half of them (54%) state that it’s the online shop account that they frequently find in the sponsored content. Furthermore, almost half of them (46%) state that official account of a certain application is what they often find being promoted in the sponsored content, while there are 19% of them who state that it’s the personal account of celebrities, bloggers, people, or Insta-celebs. Henceforth, we would like to know the reaction of the respondents toward sponsored content when they find it appearing in their feeds. Apparently, most of them (61%) admit that they just keep scrolling the timeline and don’t pay too much attention toward the sponsored content. However, there are 33% of them who admit that they do pay attention for a while when they find a sponsored content on their timeline, in order to find out what it tries to promote. There are also 5% of them who admit that they browse further the Instagram account that is being promoted in the sponsored content.

Subsequently, we would like to see how far the respondents take action toward sponsored contents. We found out that only less than half of our respondents (41%) who admit that they have ever “liked” sponsored content of certain accounts they found in their feeds. Out of some kinds of account, more than half of those 41% respondents (57%) state that the account they have ever “liked” its sponsored content is the official account of a certain product, while less than half of them state that it’s online shop account (45%) and the official account of a certain application (43%). There are also 17% of them who state that it’s the personal account of celebrities, bloggers, people, or Insta-celebs that they have ever “liked” its sponsored contents. Concurrently, we also found out that there are only 29% of our respondents who admit that they have ever been “following” certain account that has ever been promoted by sponsored content. More than half of those 29% respondents state that the kind of account they’ve been “following” since they saw it being promoted via sponsored content is the official account of a certain product (53%) and online shop account (53%), while less than half of them state that it’s the official account of a certain application (40%). There are also 23% of them who state that it’s the personal account of celebrities, bloggers, people, or Insta-celebs that they have been “following” because it was being promoted via sponsored contents.

The key to all social advertising is thinking about why the users are there in the first place. As we all know, Instagram isn’t only used to connect with friends, but it’s also used for image browsing and inspiration. This means that users are looking for something new and can be open to viewing advertisements if the targeting is spot on. If the advertisers show something interesting, they’ll see the benefit through brand engagement. Apparently, about six months after Instagram rolling out its sponsored content for advertising platform, only less than half of our respondents (44%) who admit that they don’t find it disturbing. However, there are also more than half of our respondents (61%) who apparently argue that sponsored content is indeed beneficial for Instagram users. Lastly, we found out that most of our respondents (73%) agree that sponsored content on Instagram is an effective way to promote certain products or accounts, since it has a wide range of users from all over the world, including Indonesia. Therefore, it could increase brand reach and help it connecting with engaged audiences.

For more detail you can download XLS report at the button below (bahasa). JAKPAT report consists of 3 parts which are 1) Respondent Profile, 2) Crosstabulation for each question and 3) Raw Data. Respondent profile shows you demographic profiles ( gender,age range, location by province, and monthly spending). Cross tabulation enables you to define different demographic segment preference on each answer.