A Millennial's guide to Instagram

In our report ‘A Millennial's guide to Instagram,’ we explore how Instagram metrics can be utilized to identify investment opportunities at the parent company level. Tracking brand-level follower growth and interactions can provide valuable insights.

Instagram 101

A favourite social media platform among Millennials. You can 'follow' different accounts to have their posts appear on your home page. On each post, you can like, comment, or share.

Instagram has evolved from a photo-sharing platform to a crucial marketing tool for brands seeking an online presence. Though the Instagram algorithm is ever-changing, engagement breeds engagement, as posts with more likes and comments, and accounts with growing followers are more likely to be suggested to other users. This increased engagement helps accounts gain more exposure, which is particularly beneficial for consumer goods marketing.

Global Brand Tracker [ Instagram ]

Brand Tracker [ Instagram ] is a proprietary dataset from UBS Evidence Lab. This dataset tracks page and post-level data from Instagram pages of leading global brands in categories such as Apparel Retail, Beauty Boutique, Beverages, Luxury Premium Mainstream, Restaurants, and Sportswear Athleisure. Metrics are based on the aggregation of the official Instagram pages for a given brand. Key metrics include page followers, posts, and interactions (likes and comments) on posts. Data is released monthly, and UBS Evidence Lab provides tracking of revisions for release dates from February 2021.

Our analysis reveals that simply buying cheap US consumer names with high Instagram interactions and selling expensive US consumer names with lower engagement can lead to significant returns. This approach has demonstrated a 24.7% annual performance with an information ratio of 1.45.