Instagram's Advertiser Growth Might Be More Impressive Than Its User Growth

Instagram announced it's surpassed 800 million monthly active users at an advertising event in New York on Monday. Of those users, 500 million log in every day. It took just five months for the Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) subsidiary to announce another 100 million monthly users, just a bit longer than its previous milestone announcement. (That said, it's close enough that investors shouldn't consider this a slowdown since Instagram doesn't provide regular updates or exact figures.)

Instagram has also added 100 million daily users in just eight months. That compares to Snap's (NYSE: SNAP) Snapchat, which has just 173 million daily users total. Instagram's growth is likely coming at the cost of engagement and user growth for Snapchat. Instagram Stories -- a direct copy of one of Snapchat's main features -- has been a catalyst for Instagram, accelerating user growth and grabbing 250 million daily users on its own.

Equally impressive, if not more so, is the announcement that Instagram has attracted over 2 million active advertisers. That's up from 1 million six months ago. It's been just two years since it opened its advertising products to the public, making it easier for small businesses to buy ads through its API. That presents yet another hurdle for Snap, as it looks to get its own self-serve ad platform off the ground.

Source: Fool.com