For years, Instagram has been tinkering with its algorithms and making its interface more user-friendly. And with some of the biggest Instagram influencers being celebrities and socialite personalities like Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian, Lionel Messi, and more, they've been able to successfully promote products to hundreds of millions of their followers. Heck, even Beyonce joined Instagram in 2012 and has become one of its most favorable participants. But while companies and influencers have been able to join forces in order to secure the bag, Instagram itself has found a way to make billions of dollars in ad revenue via the social media platform.
Bloomberg has reported that the picture-sharing application made approximately $20 billion USD in advertising revenue alone in 2019, which is nearly a quarter of Facebook Inc.'s total revenue for the same year. In 2012, Facebook purchased Instagram for $715 million USD prior to the app having an established strategy to sell advertisement space within its interface. The executive and creative minds over at Facebook formulated the concept to sell ad space in Instagram's 'disappearing' Stories feed.
According to Bloomberg, these astronomical figures came from an undisclosed source that is familiar with the organization and asked to remain anonymous because this information isn't necessarily for public consumption. But if this information happens to be true, Instagram's $20 billion earned in ad revenue, outperformed Google‘s YouTube platform, which produced a total of $15.1 billion in advertisement dollars in 2019.
Facebook Inc. owns Instagram, WhatsApp, FriendFeed, LiveRail, Oculus VR, and more to which they do not specifically reveal any individual company's annual income. After news leaked of Instagram potentially earning $20 billion, Facebook has declined to comment on the news.