Dive Brief:

• Research by RBC Capital Markets and Advertising Age on marketers’ views of ad platforms found at 72%, Instagram was the most popular destination for ad budgets.
• Other leaders included visual social media platforms Pinterest at 41% and Snapchat at 36%.
• One reason Instagram might be attractive for advertising is it recently hit the 400 million monthly user mark, and its ad platform is tied to its parent company Facebook.

Dive Insight:

When asked where they are looking to place future ad budget dollars, U.S. marketers overwhelmingly chose visual social media platforms in general. Specifically 72% of marketers reported in an RBC Capital Markets and Advertising Age survey they are interested in spending more ad dollars on photo-sharing app Instagram. Pinterest and Snapchat rounded out the top three, followed by Amazon, Google+, Tumblr, Reddit and Yelp.

Instagram recently hit a major benchmark with 400 million monthly users (outpacing Twitter's 316 million users). Plus, advertising on the platform is a bit more seamless for marketers who already are actively advertising on Facebook since the two social networks share an ad platform. Advertising on Instagram should hit $600 million this year according to eMarketer, and rise to $1.48 billion next year. EMarketer also estimates that more than 40% of US smartphone users will use Instagram at least monthly this year.

Last week during a session at Advertising Week in New York, Instagram Director of Brand Development Daniel Habashi told marketers 97% of campaigns on the platform have generated significant lift in ad recall – a 17 point average ad recall lift.