Instagram doubles advertiser base in six months

Instagram now has 500,000 advertisers, more than double the number it had in February, the Facebook-owned photo and video sharing app said on Thursday, Fortune.com reports.

Acquired by Facebook for $1 billion four years ago, Instagram only opened up its advertising program in September. The fast rise shows a strong momentum with advertisers that want to reach its 500 million monthly active users.

Instagram’s advertiser numbers, however, are still far cry from that of Facebook, which is estimated to have 2 million advertisers. But Instagram has already surpassed other, older social media sites like Twitter, which has just over 100,000 advertisers.

Instagram’s COO Marne Levine said that while the most of the world’s top brands are currently advertising on Instagram, most of the social app’s advertisers are small businesses.

Many of these businesses also advertise on parent company Facebook, but some are just spending money to advertise on Instagram, she added. That could be because the app is particularly popular amongst Millennials. According to anE-marketer report, this year, there will be 48.2 million millennial Instagram users in the US. By 2019, nearly two-thirds of all millennial smartphone users will use Instagram.