In August 2013, L2 surveyed prestige brands across 15 global social media platforms, taking a deep dive into Instagram, evaluating performance and programing of 249 prestige brands on the platform. Here are some highlights of their findings:

• About 93% of prestige companies maintain a presence on Instagram. Brands post an average of 5.5 times a week and 43% of accounts post more than once a day. 99% of user engagement is likes. Beauty brands are the fastest growing accounts on Instagram and yield the greatest engagement. Urban Decay, Essie and Lush outperform their peers.

• The photo sharing social media platform has in just three years amassed 150 million users and generates 15 times the engagement and double the engaged user base than its parent company, Facebook.

• Featuring user generated content at the point of purchase helps boost conversion rate up 7%.

• Instagram ranked 7 on the list of the Top 10 Mobile Apps in 2013 and ranked highest in terms of growth in average unique users, with a 66% increase.

• Instagram ranked first in global social platform active usage during the second half of 2013 with a 23% increase. The next highest increase was by LinkedIn, with a 9% increase, according to Global Web Index.

• 72% of prestige brands post Instagram videos, however, video only accounts for 4% of brand content. The expertise required to produce high quality short form video remains a barrier for most brands.

• The run time for Instagram videos is 15 seconds. It is rumored the platform will sell Instagram video ads similar to T.V. airtime.

• Nine out of 10 Instagram video shares occur on Facebook and 1% of brand posts to Facebook are from Instagram. Slightly more than half of prestige brands feature a Facebook custom tab highlighting an Instagram account.

To access the full Intelligence Report: Instagram contact [email protected].