Instagram is now home to more than 1 million monthly advertisers and continues to expand features for business profiles. On Wednesday, the social media platform shared that the ability to book a service without leaving Instagram is coming before the end of 2017.
Just last year, Instagram was only home to 200,000 active advertisers. The photo-sharing platform says that the last year has brought more changes than any other, with Instagram Stories, new branding, video growth and reaching 600 million users.
More than 8 million businesses now use Instagram, with a majority of them coming from the U.S., Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, and the U.K. Instagram says that more than 120 million users clicked to visit a website, direct message or contact a business in February alone.
Two years ago, Instagram didn’t have any monthly active advertisers but went from none to half a million in a year, reaching that milestone in September. Instagram credits the growth to a number of different factors, including simplicity, saying a business account can be set up in as little as four taps. The platform also began testing in-app shopping in 2016 and recently expanded analytics or Insights as well as adding multi-image posts.
“People come to Instagram to follow their passions, from travel and fashion to food, entertainment and everything in between,” the announcement reads. “And those passions extend to brands, with 80 percent of Instagrammers following a business today.”
Instagram says it will be rolling out more features for those advertising customers and that in-app booking is just one example of that. Instagram teased the upcoming feature which adds a book option on the business profile that then takes users to select their service, date, and time.
