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Instagram Reels Stats and Performance Benchmarks per Industry

Jamie Landry
May 2, 2023
Last Updated On
instagram reels stats blog header

Short-form video is one of the most effective mediums to increase your Instagram Reels engagement rate. Knowing and understanding average Instagram Reel benchmarks for your industry (and in general) makes it possible to set realistic, achievable goals that contribute to your overall marketing objectives. 

If your brand sets goals arbitrarily, this can do more harm than good — it’s easy to get discouraged with your efforts, not know where to pivot in your strategy, or, conversely, know which content actually performs well. 

This article covers: 

  • Overall average Instagram Reels views. 
  • Overall average Instagram engagement rate. 
  • Overall average Instagram Reels likes.
  • Instagram Reels stats by industry.
  • How Instagram insights help brands become industry leaders. 

Average Instagram Reels Views

So, how many average Reel views should brands aim for on Instagram? On average, Instagram Reels receive 101K views in a six-month period. But what are the average Instagram Reels views by specific industry?

instagram reels benchmarks by industry chart

Beauty - 116.9K Views

The Beauty Industry has the highest number of average Instagram Reel views at 116.9K in a six-month period. 

Image credit: @glossier

For the hyper-visual Beauty Industry, video is a great medium to highlight the product itself, but also tutorials, tips, and trends that use beauty products. This format also lends itself well to both professionally-produced video and lo-fi, short-form content.

CPG, Food and Beverage - 40.9K Views

The Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), Food and Beverage Industry has some of the lowest average Instagram Reel views at 40.9K in a six-month period. 

CPG, Food and Beverage brands should get creative with their Reels content. Tools like Vision can help predict which content will perform the best with your audience — ultra helpful in a competitive landscape.

martha stewart with liquid death instagram reel screenshot
Image credit: @liquiddeath

Sparkling water brand Liquid Death created a funny video and partnered with Martha Stewart (a lifestyle guru known for her onscreen DIYs) to showcase a special edition candle supporting recycling efforts. Most of its Reels content focuses on funny situations and punchlines incorporating Liquid Death beverages.

Home - 98.7K Views 

The Home Industry is another visual vertical that benefits from Instagram Reels and sees 98.7K average views in a six-month period.

ice in glass cb2 instagram reel screenshot
Image credit: @cb2

CB2 is an excellent example of showcasing dish ware from its eponymous brand while partnering with a related brand in the Food and Beverage Industry. CB2 shows its customer how its product can be used to create a beautiful beverage versus simply showing the glassware on camera.  

Luxury and Fashion - 105.8K Views 

The Luxury and Fashion Industries also benefit from a hyper-visual platform like Reels.

jisoo for dior instagram reel screenshot
Image credit: @dior

While lo-fi, short-form organic content tends to perform well on Instagram Reels, luxury brands often use polished, professional videos for their content. 

Publishing and Media - 176.3K Views 

The Media and Publishing Industry has the highest average views on Reels. Since these industries encompass magazines, journals, books, and more, this makes sense. While it might seem that words are the industry's mainstay, they have a great opportunity to capture views with visual content that takes users inside the action of an event they're covering, showcase behind-the-scenes footage from an interview, photoshoot outtakes, or clips from their YouTube channel and website.

paper magazine reel screenshot
Image credit: @papermagazine

Take Vogue’s Instagram Reels, for example — the publisher shares compelling clips from its YouTube series ‘My Life in Looks,’ which drives the average Instagram engagement but also encourages users to seek out the full video on its YouTube account.

Retail - 76.4K Views 

While the Retail Industry has the second-lowest average views, they still benefit from the Reels format. 

Image credit: @target

Since many retail operations — like Target — offer a slew of products, this presents a wide range of opportunities to showcase home products, clothing, shoes, food, makeup, cleaning products, children’s toys, and more. However, it also presents a challenge since so many content opportunities can make it difficult to streamline content strategies. 

Retail brands should consider their target demographic and craft their visual content strategy around product lines that are popular with these individuals.

Average Instagram Engagement Rate

When it comes to Instagram engagement, the overall average Engagement Rate is perhaps lower than you might expect at 0.6%. 

Growing brands have a slightly higher Engagement Rate at 1.1%. However, this number falls for established brands (190K-1.1M followers), who have a 0.4% average Engagement Rate, and large brands (1.1M followers), who have a 0.3% average Engagement Rate. 

When it comes to industry-specific stats, average Engagement Rates are a little lower.

  • Beauty Industry: 0.3% Engagement Rate.
  • CPG, Food and Beverage Industry: 0.4% average Engagement Rate.
  • Publishing and Media Industry: 0.4% average Engagement Rate.
  • Home Industry: 0.2% average Engagement Rate.
  • Luxury and Fashion Industry: 0.2% average Engagement Rate.
  • Retail Industry: 0.2% average Engagement Rate.

Interestingly, the Media and Publishing Industry claims the largest number of average likes at 5.9K, which positively impacts their Engagement Rate average.

Average Instagram Reels Likes

If the Media and Publishing Industry has the most Instagram Reel likes, which industry follows? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Beauty, Fashion and Luxury Industries have an average of 3.7K likes over a six-month period. The Home and Retail industries both receive an average of 1.7K likes, while the CPG, Food and Beverage Industry receives just an average of 906 Instagram Reel likes. 

So, how many views on Reels is good? Generally, you exceed the average if your brand receives more than 3.4K likes. However, this number is considerably lower for growing or established brands. This can be attributed to higher following counts — despite having a larger user base to engage.

Instagram Reels Stats for Brands Based on Follower Size

Just like different industries have different Engagement Rates, account follower size also impacts a brand's Instagram Reel metrics.

instagram reels benchmarks by follower size chart

Growing Brands (0-190K)

Growing brands — accounts with 0-190K followers — have a 54.6% average Effectiveness Rate. This metric measures the impact and success of your video content and uses reach in place of follower count. Hence, brands better understand their engagement without the negative implications inactive followers can have. 

While comments, shares, and views are also higher the more followers your brand has, growing brands have a 15.9K average Reach and can expect to see lower numbers while they build their follower count. They receive an average of 489 likes, 21 comments, 50 shares, and 16.2K views.

Established Brands (190K-1.1M)

Established brands tend to see a lower average Effectiveness Rate of 19.3%.

Some social accounts fall victim to ghost followers, and inactive followers can negatively impact your Engagement Rate. In lieu of cleaning your account and removing these followers (which is a great way to mitigate plummeting Engagement Rates), calculating the Effectiveness Rate (likes + comments + saves + video views / reach) is a great way to measure engagement. 

Established brands have an average of 57.1K reach, 1.8K likes, 54 comments, 181 shares, and 58.8K views.

Larger Brands (1.1M+ Followers)

While larger brands tend to see a lower Engagement Rate at 0.3%, they benefit from higher reach, with an average of 97.7K reach. They also benefit from a higher number of interactions — larger brands see 8.8K average likes, 141 comments, 696 shares and 254.8K views. 

It’s worth noting that Engagement Rates are a significant contributor to ranking in the Instagram algorithm, so this is an important metric to track consistently. 

Entertainment Score is another great benchmark for brands to set, which considers your Engagement and Retention Rate, a more robust calculation than simply followers (although those are important too). Growing brands have an average Entertainment Score of 4.1, established brands have a 3.8 score, and large brands have a higher score of 4.9.

Instagram Reels Stats by Industry

Industry Benchmarks are essential to crafting your strategy — the goals you use to inform your strategy’s tactics, and benchmarks tell you where your objectives should be and help you gauge success. 

While looking at brand averages helps inform your Instagram Reels strategy, it’s even better to get down to the nitty gritty and discover the benchmarks for your industry.

Beauty Industry Instagram Reels Performance Benchmarks

The Beauty Industry has significantly more reach than other industries at 114.9K and sees a similarly high Entertainment Score of 4.5 and an Effectiveness Rate of 12.6%. While not the highest of industry averages, they have fairly high average views at 11.69K. 

The Beauty Industry’s average Engagement Rate is 0.3%. This slightly lower number is due to their higher number of average likes at 3.7K, while the average number of Instagram Reel comments the beauty industry receives, is just 78. In contrast, they receive 165 shares on average.

Retail Industry Instagram Reels Performance Benchmarks

While the Retail Industry still benefits from Reels content, the data looks slightly different compared to the Beauty Industry and is more on par with the CPG, Food and Beverage Industry. 

Their average Engagement Rate sits at just 0.2%, which makes sense compared to Retail’s average 74.2K reach and 41 views. They also receive a decent average number of likes at 1.7K. Since likes, comments, and shares are slightly lower in some categories (except those which outperform CPG), their smaller average Effectiveness Rate of 11.4K% and 2.7 Entertainment Scores are also slightly lower.

Media and Publishing Instagram Reels Performance Benchmarks

Media and Publishing offer some especially compelling data to look at. Initially, some people might not consider Media and Publishing particularly visual, however, they pull some impressive Instagram Reel averages. 

They have one of the highest average Engagement Rate at 0.4% and the highest average Effectiveness Rate at 19.3%. They also tie with the Beauty Industry for the highest average Entertainment Score of 4.5. Average likes are also significantly higher for Media and Publishing with 5.9K likes, 2.2K higher than Beauty and Fashion, who both tie with 3.7K likes. While a higher Reach contributes to Engagement and Effectiveness Rates, Media and Publishing have a 172K average reach — the highest among all industries analyzed.

Fashion and Luxury Instagram Reels Performance Benchmarks

The Fashion and Luxury Industry sees a 0.2% average Engagement Rate, an average 3.8% Entertainment Score, and an average 11.6% Effectiveness Rate. Their average reach falls at 103.9K, while they receive about 50 comments, 145 shares, and 105.8K views. 

Lower comments could be attributed to their customer base simply not sparing their time to engage with content beyond viewing and liking — luxury brands, in particular, might face challenges building a community in an industry known for often being private and discreet.

Home Industry Instagram Reels Performance Benchmarks

The Home Industry also falls on the lower end of the average Engagement Rate at 0.2%. Its average Effectiveness Rate is 16.4%, its Entertainment Score is 3.2, and its reach is 94.9K with 98.7K views. Unfortunately, this industry also sees some of the lowest average comments at just 38. Be sure not to set your sights too high during the goal-setting phase of your Instagram marketing, or you risk setting an unrealistic goal. However, they have one of the highest average shares (after Media and Publishing), with 260.

CPG, Food and Beverage Industry Instagram Reels Performance Benchmarks

The CPG, Food and Beverage Industry also benefits from the Reels medium. Its average Entertainment Score is the second-highest at 4.3. However, it boasts the highest Effectiveness Rate in the industry at 17.4%, meaning its followers and users interacting with its visual content are highly engaged. Its lower average views at 40.9K and its lower average Reach at 40.2K contribute to its higher 0.4% Engagement Rate. Nonetheless, they have significantly lower average likes at 906 than other industries analyzed. 

In terms of account interactions, the CPG, Food and Beverage Industry has 69 average comments and 164 shares.

Become an Industry Leader on Social With Instagram Insights From Dash Hudson

If you want to take your brand's Reels strategy to the next level, Dash Hudson's Instagram Insights will take you there. With both Reels and Feed insights, Dash Hudson also gives you an understanding of which user-generated content performs best for your account. 

Another feature that marketers love for Instagram is LikeShop — this creates a seamless checkout experience from your feed to a custom shoppable gallery or landing page of your choice.

Of course, you'll need to measure your content strategy's impact on your goals and whether you meet or exceed your industry's benchmarks. Competitive Insights and Benchmarking provides custom data like Effectiveness Rate and Entertainment Score while tracking your competitor's content, so you have your finger on the pulse of everything happening in your social landscape.

FAQs

How do you measure Instagram Reel performance?

You can measure the performance of your Instagram Reels in a few different ways — these all depend on which goals and business objectives you’ve identified in your Instagram strategy.

Some of the most common metrics to measure the impact of Instagram Reels are: 

  • Engagement Rate. 
  • Followers gained/Reach. 
  • Likes, comments, and shares. 
  • Website traffic. 

Brands should use average benchmarks and industry Reels performance measures, if available, to gauge their performance against competitors. For example, if you’re in the Beauty Industry and you’ve set a goal to receive 10K likes on Reels each month, and you receive 5K likes on average, you might grow discouraged that you haven’t reached your goal. When you consider that the average number of Instagram Reel likes for the Beauty Industry is 3.7K, 5K likes is a significant achievement. 

How can I improve my Instagram Reel performance?

There are many ways brands can improve their Instagram Reels performance. What improvements will benefit your account is another story — however, before tweaking your entire visual strategy, here are a few things to take into account:

  • Make sure you publish during the best times to post on TikTok.
  • Optimize captions with hashtags and keywords.
  • Dive into social media analytics and determine which content resonates best with your audience — then, refine your strategy to create similar content.

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