• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, December 5, 2018

Although photos remained the most highly promoted type of social media content, video promotions soared in 2018. That’s according to Socialbakers, which based its findings on roughly 10 billion pieces of content.

Not surprisingly, the bulk of such promotions were split between Facebook and Instagram.

At least in terms of engagement levels, Instagram is actually supplanting Facebook’s flagship app as the preferred channel among marketers, as Socialbakers sees it.

“Instagram is becoming the No. 1 social-media platform when it comes to engagement for brands,” Yuval Ben-Itzhak, CEO,Socialbakers, notes in the new report.

“When we look at engagement on an absolute level, Instagram has a lot more engagement for brands than Facebook does, despite having a significantly smaller audience size,” per Ben-Itzhak. “As a result, we see businesses leveraging Instagram for advertising more than ever before.”

Overall, with 2.6 billion monthly active users, Facebook’s family of apps is still where most consumer-to-brand engagements occur. Influencers are driving today’s social marketing trends from video promotions to Instagram engagement.

By 2020, influencer marketing could become a $10 billion market, influencer marketing agency Mediakix projected earlier this year.

While overall digital content consumption grew in September, Facebook properties continued to lose market share.

Facebook-related properties -- including Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook’s flagship app -- fell by 7%, year-over-year, according to recent analysis of Nielsen data by Pivotal Research.

In aggregate, core Facebook properties -- including Messenger -- fell by 13%, while time spent per user fell by a whopping 20%, year-over-year.

The declines continued despite the increasing popularity of Instagram -- which saw usage increase by 41%. WhatsApp saw usage increase by 38%, year-over-year.