This is our largest and most comprehensive Instagram Stories Benchmark Report to date.
All the metrics you care about, from retention to exit to responses, and beyond, have been updated. We’ve compared post engagement to Story engagement, and thrown in Reels data for an extra perspective, so you can evaluate how you’re doing across three vastly diverse mediums.
More Instagram accounts, Stories, and filters than ever before are featured for a comprehensive look at Instagram Stories in 2023.
Important Lessons from Instagram’s Stories
Compared to last year, there hasn’t been much of a rise in the amount of stories published
We found that in 2021, brands uploaded as many Stories as they did in 2019, which is a first in our reporting history. The status quo isn’t terrible, but it’s also not growth.
Continued decline in the Reach Rate
Less of your audience is seeing your Stories (and articles!) this year compared to last. Instagram posts, YouTube videos, and TikTok videos all compete with Stories for users’ attention.
Rates of Retention are Steady
Even though brands saw a rise in their tap-back rates, this crucial statistic remained same since the brands’ reply rates remained the same and their leave rates climbed.
Blogs get more views than Stories.
The reach of Instagram posts remains far higher than that of Instagram Stories. Use captivating posts to draw in more readers and increase interaction in Stories.
Times when Instagram Stories are posted
Do more Stories improve upon fewer? Finding out how often a typical company releases a new “Story” per month is a good starting point for answering this age-old topic.
To help you get a sense of the complete spectrum of the important Instagram Stories data, we’ve included the median performance as well as metrics from the top and lowest 25% of companies.
The typical company only updates their Instagram Story once every 11 days.
About 17 times a month, or once every other day, the top 25% most active companies write Stories.
Only slightly more than one Story per week is published by the least prolific 25% of companies.
There hasn’t been much of a shift in the average number of monthly story posts made by any given user over the past few years. Due of their reliability, most businesses continue to update their Stories little over twice a week.
Succession Planning
One of the most useful indicators for gauging the success of your Instagram Stories is the percentage of viewers who make it through to the end. Why? If a viewer watches all of your videos, you’ve won them over; they’re not simply casual observers. This indicator indicates the proportion of viewers who have seen all of a Story’s current frame.
The retention rate also decreases as more frames are released.
The typical retention rate remained relatively unchanged this year.
The highest drop occurs between 1 and 2 frames daily as users swipe away from the Story.
The retention loss slows down after the initial steep drop, and remains over 75% through 6 frames each day.
Retention is not affected by Instagram’s algorithm or in competition with another business, making it one of the most accurate methods to gauge the power and resonance of your content. It’s just you, your audience, and your material if you want to prevent them from tapping away and onto the next Story. Keep in mind that memory decreases but does not plateau with increasing frame counts, so focus on making a strong initial impression.
Rank of Posts Reached
The percentage of your followers who actually viewed a post (your “post reach rate”) fell again this year.
However, just because your brand’s reach is lesser on Stories than on posts doesn’t imply you should stop making Stories. Story impressions, in a nutshell, aren’t useless and may be a terrific way to interact with your audience and build a relationship with them over time.
Posts and Stories serve various purposes and should be seen as separate marketing strategies. While posts are fantastic for a quick read, Stories have the potential to keep your audience interested for much longer.
As an aside, we’ve got you covered whether you’re curious about the best time to post to Instagram or how often you should update your feed.
After Each Prospect Engaged
This indicator is the ratio of a post’s total likes, comments, and saves to its total impressions.
If you define engagement rate as the number of interactions multiplied by the increase number of followers, you will get a different figure than if you define it as the number of interactions multiplied by the number of impressions. This measure can be adjusted to fit your needs.
It’s important to keep in mind that the Post Engagement per Impression measure is rarely used in a competitive setting outside of the businesses whose handles you manage.
In 2018, engagement rates on social media posts fell independent of the number of people who saw them.
This year, the best post engagement/impression rates were maintained by medium-sized handles (50k-200k followers).
The biggest and smallest companies fared the worst, with around a 25% reduction in handles across both categories.
Effect Size of Media on Post-View Interactions
The variation in Post Engagement per Impression across different Instagram post types is fascinating.
In 2022, all forms of media had a decline in post engagement per impression.
Post engagement per impression on videos dropped by almost 20%.
Compared to other post formats, reels fared better, dropping only 5% engagement per impression from 2021.