Instagram

Instagram is Meta's photo and short-video platform, and in most Western markets it is where lifestyle, fashion, food, fitness and travel audiences concentrate.

Its formats now split three ways: the feed for permanent posts, Stories for daily and disposable content, and Reels for algorithmic reach. Reels behave more like TikTok — distribution depends on engagement rather than follower count — which makes them the practical route for new accounts to be discovered.

For commerce, shopping tags let a post link directly to products, and the platform's influencer economy is the most developed of any network, which is why most brand budgets there go to creators rather than to ads alone.