• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, February 12, 2020

For better or worse, brand-backed influencers continue to proliferate.

That’s according to the latest report from Socialbakers, which found that the number of influencers using #Ad (or a local language equivalent) in their posts grew by 90.5% from the fourth quarter of 2018 to the same period in 2019.

The Federal Trade Commission, of course, requires influencers to disclose their relationship with marketers by prominently featuring the “Ad” hashtag in their posts.

Not surprisingly, a clear majority of influencers continue to identify Instagram as their go-to social platform.

More notable, however, is just how many more engagements brands are experiencing on Instagram relative to Facebook’s flagship platform.

During the fourth quarter of 2019, total interactions on Instagram were nearly 20 times larger than those on Facebook, by Socialbakers’ estimate.

Separately, the social media marketing firm found that social engagements were sluggish throughout the 2019 holiday period.

In fact, relative post interactions for both Instagram and Facebook were lower, last year, than they were during the same period in 2018.

Particularly hard hit, the fashion category saw its post interactions on Instagram decline by 19.4%, during the fourth quarter of 2019.

Among other implications, these declines suggest that brands need to get smarter about the content they post, according to Socialbakers.

Bucking the downward trend, the services category experienced a 66.7% spike in engagement on Instagram during the fourth quarter.

By Socialbakers’ definition, services is a broad category that includes everything from lawyers and accounting services to event organizers and weight loss gurus.

Meanwhile, women continue to make up the majority of fans and followers on brand pages on both Instagram and Facebook.

On Instagram, 58% of brand page followers were female, during the fourth quarter. On Facebook, women made up 56.7% of the total audience of page fans, although there were slightly more men in the 18-24 age demographic.

Women also continue to represent the majority in terms of mentioning and interacting with brand pages in the prime marketing demographic of 25-34. Overall, women represented 56.4% of the audience engaging with brands during the fourth quarter.