40% of top Instagram videos come from brands, Unruly reveals, describing it as the ‘perfect solution’ for real-time content
Samsung, General Electric and Disney are amongst the 80-plus brands on the Unruly Viral Video Chart’s top 1,000 Instagram videos, with brands making up 40 per cent of the total list.
The research was unveiled as Unruly launches a new product set for Instagram.
The most shared brand on Instagram Video was MTV, with 84 videos in the top 1,000, attracting a total of 134,110 shares altogether across Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere.
Phil Townend, MD EMEA at Unruly, said: “New short-form content platforms such as Vine and Instagram are experiencing explosive growth. By engaging consumers in their native environments across today’s complex and fragmented media landscape, and utilizing the Open Web to amplify awareness of their content, brands can maximize the effectiveness of their content marketing strategies to drive sharing and ultimately increase their market share.
“It’s remarkable that within just five months of launch, Instagram videos now account for almost 10 per cent as many tweets as YouTube videos do. Smart marketers are no longer measuring success based on a YouTube view count and advertisers understand that it’s people first, platform second.”
The research by Unruly also discovered that nine out of ten shares take place on Facebook.
Townend went on to discuss the role that marketing and advertising through Instagram video can have for a brand.
"Savvy marketers and brands are engaging their audience in their native environments. The latest explosion in short-form content is encouraging advertisers to get creative and move beyond the YouTube view count to engage their consumers and amplify their brand across the Open Web,” he told The Drum.
"Platforms such as Instagram offer the perfect solution for marketers who are increasingly expected to create real-time content, directly responding to new data, surging trends, current news events and consumer feedback.
"Video on Instagram is already working for many brand marketers across the globe and I expect ‘sugar cube’ content in general to appear on many more marketing plans over the coming months as brands embrace their role as a newsroom and look to embrace agile marketing.
"Where there’s diversity and where there’s innovation from such big players, the consumer will be the winner. What’s great is that consumers have a full spectrum of platforms to discover video content on - whether they want to watch and share short form content on their mobile on their commute to work or browse longer videos at home on their tablets while relaxing on their sofa.
"What's important is that producers and agencies get creative with short form - e.g. making interesting content for the medium rather than cutting down 30" TV spots, which is the trend we saw with pre-roll. Ultimately, users will vote with their feet if they feel a brand is simply trying to ram a sales message down their throat - canny advertisers will engage, surprise and entertain."
The new set of product tools launched by Unruly will allow brands and agencies to create Instagram videos, use Unruly ShareRank to test the ‘shareability’ of their Instagrams and then measure results.