Instagram has arguably become the quintessential social platform for product placement, becoming an important part of businesses’ marketing strategies and a tool optimised for customer engagement.

Now, a new report, derived from a research conducted by communications agency Battenhall, has revealed that within the application, niche markets tend to be the most engaged, with gaming phenomenon Fortnite and luxury automotive companies Tesla and Bugatti being the most engaged brands on Instagram right now. For the first time, they leave behind the fashion brands that used to dominate the top of the charts.

Examining the 100 most-followed brands on Instagram, the research also revealed that Fortnite’s channel, which is, like the brand itself, only one year old, has seen the most rapid growth, having an increase of 12m followers within the year, a proof of its global acclaim. Following Fortnite, were well-established brands like Gucci, National Geographic and Marvel.

Instagram has succeeded in engaging the most sought-after target groups: Millennials and Generation Z. This gives brands that aim to engage those groups an opportunity to do so. However, he top of the rank features brands whose traditional consumer audiences like outside of those demographics, such asNational Geographic and Bugatti. Instagram is thus being used to build brand awareness on a scale that no other platform has matched.

Apart from engagement rate and growth, Battenhall analysed the brands’ daily activity, audience demographic and content type, while checking the authenticity of followers. From the analysis, it was revealed that the most activity is found on brands’ stories, with brands having published 10,079 stories just in the month of October, 13% more than the activity that has been noted in the main feed. The results show a turning point in the way brands promote their products and tell their stories on social media.

Fortnite is by far the channel that has accumulated the most engagement on Instagram, with its engagement reaching 7.8%, more than twice the rate of Bugatti, which comes second. Surprisingly, MTV, Prada and Asos are at the bottom of the rank, each receiving less than 0.13 % of engagement per post.

To deal with their decline in engagement, fashion brands have increased the frequency of their posts, with Fashion Nova, Calvin Klein and Boo Hoo being some of the brands that post more often.

Drew Benvie, founder and MD of Battenhall, says, “In 2017, 94%of the FTSE 100 companies had Twitter profiles, but only 46%of them were on Instagram. Instagram is now three times the size of Twitter and 47 brands in our report now boast over 10m followers. Innovation is surging too, with 98%of the top 100 brands posting to Instagram Stories and 76%to IGTV. We expect to see plenty more growth from Instagram as a social network, and from brand followers across all business sectors in the year ahead.”

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