Short video formats such as Reels and TikTok are becoming important for marketers this year. In fact, when they see ads from brands on social media, the style that Gen Zers prefer the most is the Story/Reels/TikTok style. A new study from Socialinsider digs into Instagram Reels performance data, finding that they have an average post engagement rate that is at least twice as high as other Instagram post types.
As part of the study, Socialinsider examined more than 352,000 Instagram Reels from 5,500 profiles during the period of June 2021 to June 2022.
Reels consistently outperformed other post types such as Carousel, Image and Video during the period of analysis. In fact, while post engagement rates declined for those other post types during the year-long period, they remained relatively steady for Reels.
As a benchmark, the report reveals that Instagram Reels’ average engagement rate is 1.95%.
This benchmark rate does vary considerably by an account’s number of followers. As is often the case, the strongest post engagement rates were for profiles with relatively few followers. As such, the highest average engagement rate for Instagram Reels were for accounts with 0-5,000 followers (3.79%) and 5-10,000 followers (3.72%). For context, the next-highest average engagement rates for accounts with this size were for Carousel posts, at 2.37% and 1.66%, respectively.
Indeed, Reels emerged as the post type with the highest average engagement rate across profiles of all follower sizes, with Carousels next in each case. However, while Videos outperformed Images for accounts with less than 50,000 followers, the opposite was true for larger profiles, for which Images had a slightly higher engagement rate than Videos.
Reels also have “incredible reach rates,” at almost 40% for the smallest accounts, more than 10 times higher than the reach rates of other post types for profiles with 0-5,000 followers. Reach rates were consistently higher for Reels than other post types (by a multiple of 2.5-12x) regardless of the profile’s follower count.
For more, check out the study here.
