Instagram beats TikTok for video-based user acquisition, survey finds

Dive Brief:

Marketers prefer Instagram as their platform for video-based user acquisition over TikTok, according to global research from app marketing solution Zoomd that Marketing Dive can exclusively share.
When asked to split their user acquisition spend between Instagram and TikTok, 79% of survey respondents allotted at least 75% of their budget to Instagram, compared with 25% at most for TikTok. However, when asked which media sources they worked with in 2023, 53% of respondents said both TikTok and Instagram.
The survey was conducted in February and March 2024, before U.S. lawmakers approved a bill requiring TikTok to separate from its Chinese ownership or face a potential ban in the country, which the ByteDance-owned company is now challenging in court.

Dive Insight:

While the potential preference by mobile marketers for Instagram when it comes to user acquisition could easily be explained away by the uncertainty of TikTok’s future, the fact that the Zoomd survey was conducted before the U.S. Congress voted to force a sale of the platform from its Chinese ownership or face a ban could reveal a separate issue. Specifically, Instagram and its parent, Meta, may be more advertiser friendly than TikTok and, therefore, more palatable to marketers.

“I believe the preference for Instagram is a reflection of the user acquisition KPIs achieved via Instagram and the combined impact of Meta’s ad solutions for mobile marketers,” said Zoomd CMO Omri Argaman, in a statement shared with Marketing Dive.

Other findings in the survey revealed that a median of 50% of mobile marketers have used artificial intelligence (AI) technology to optimize their user acquisition campaigns, though that usage rate varied widely. The buzzy tech continues to captivate adland, while platforms including Meta have simultaneously been expanding their know-how. Forty percent of respondents said that they used AI to optimize 60% of their user acquisition ads.

Reflecting the growing use of user-generated content and the increasing power of influencers, 56% of respondents in Zoomd’s survey said they used influencers and creators for user acquisition in 2023. Marketers are also betting on creators more broadly, with 44% planning to increase their investment in content creators this year, according to findings from the IAB and TalkShoppe.

Other findings from the study suggest that mobile marketers are having difficulty navigating the new privacy-driven app tracking changes on iOS and Android platforms. Only 13% of those surveyed used first-party data in most (more than 80%) of their user acquisition campaigns, while 19% of respondents only used first-party data in 20% of their campaigns. Despite the increased challenges of retargeting and retention due to the privacy restrictions, 69% of respondents said they are increasing their budgets for such campaigns by as much as 20% in 2024.

More optimistically, 53% of respondents said they plan on increasing their user acquisition budgets this year, while the remaining 47% said they would stay the same. More than half of the respondents (53%) said they used more than 10 mobile media sources in 2023. Three-quarters of respondents said they’ll use the same amount in 2024 while the remainder said they would use more.

When respondents were asked how they monetize their apps, in-app purchases remain the most popular monetization option, cited by 81% of the respondents. Half of those surveyed said they monetized through in-app advertising and 38% said they used payment for downloads or subscriptions.