Mastering Instagram in 2025: How Carousels, Reels, and User-Generated Content Shape Engagement

The SocialInsider team has released its Instagram Benchmarks 2025 Report, offering key insights and content performance statistics to help businesses optimize their presence on the platform. The first key insight is that Instagram saw a 16% YoY decline in engagement and this is because users have become selective in the content they want to consume. In 2024, the engagement rates were 0.50% for carousels, 0.45% for reels, and 0.40% for single images. This means that if someone wants to stand out on the platform, they have to produce different and high quality content that holds some value in users’ eyes. It is also important that content creator/mangers post reels and stories frequently, reels for the general audience and stories for followers. Users always get attracted towards content that is relatable with some humor, and creativity through user-generated content holds value like no other.

Carousels on Instagram are doing way better than reels and stories, but what's the reason behind it? It's simple; users just love swiping through different slides especially if they are based on tutorials, storytelling and even content that evokes emotions. Carousels are a great way to boost engagement and you can make them interesting by creating carousels in a way that they seem like mini-guides, starting them off with a strong hook that immediately catches the interest of users, wrapping the last slide with urging followers to like, save and comment and creating the content so creative and interesting that people cannot help but save it. Instagram pages of Airbnb and Headspace have great examples of carousels which hook up with the users from start to finish.

• Also read: Stop Guessing, Start Knowing: The Social Media Tools You Need for 2025

The report also found that brands posted 11% more reels in 2024 as compared to last year which means that many brands are prioritizing reels over posting content like single post or carousels. As reels have good reach potential and most users love watching reels, brands love making unique and creative reels to gain followers. Reels aren't really made for followers, they are made to reach a general audience and they can discover the brands. If you want to create an effective reels strategy, it is important to add reels into your weekly posts, and share them at least twice a week. Keep the reels short but make them fun so that users cannot help but stay on them and keep wanting to come back to watch the unique blend of creativity, humor and your brand value. Instagram pages of Sephora and Allbirds have some good examples of reels that are a shadow of their brands.

Another thing that reels attract are comments, especially if the brands have less than 100k followers. On the other hand, brands with more than 100k followers get more comments on images. When you are getting comments on your Instagram post, it means that you have an engaged audience who loves your content and shares feedback about it. To further improve the engagement, it is best to reply to those comments to keep the audience hooked. If you want to get more comments on your posts, always end the content with a question or ask the audience some question in the caption. Keep the content trendy with some humor and try to share some behind the scenes moments too as the audience loves to see what goes beyond the Instagram posts. Ben & Jerry and Glossier’s Instagram pages have some good content that engages the followers and they cannot help but comment.

• Related: Clickbait, Chaos, and Burnout: How 2024 Redefined Our Social Media Experience

It was also found that carousels on Instagram get saved the most, especially for large brands. If an account has less than 5k followers, their carousel posts get average 3 saves, while accounts with more than 100k followers get average 134 saves on carousels. Users save carousels because they find them save-worthy, valuable and because they have a good hook, ever-green and interesting like Headspace and National Geographic. The award for highest impression rates goes to reels, with average 30% impressions on accounts with less than 5k followers. Reels also get the highest impressions on accounts with more than 100k followers at 12%. To get more engagements on reels, always make sure to do big announcements through them that hook viewers from the start, use them to create hype around some of your content or big moments and share all the customer stories through them. Check out some reels of nike to gain insights about how to make reels that get more impressions.

Why do small brands get the most impression on reels? It is because Instagram gives some extra visibility boost to them to help small accounts get attention they need. There will be a 13% average view rate on reels from small brand accounts in 2025, as compared to 6.5% reel view rate on large brand accounts. So small businesses should use this advantage from Instagram to show off their brand’s personality by keeping their content simple but authentic, targeting niche audiences and sharing relatable content everyday. Small brands also have the highest potential to increase their Instagram followers and according to the analytics, there will be a 40% average follower growth rate for small brands under 5k followers in 2025. To get more followers, small brands should share unique content, connect with their followers, and team up with like minded influencers or creators.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

US Secret Service Admits to Tracking People with Location Details Taken Without Consent

The American Secret Service has made some shocking confessions about tracking users. This includes making use of location details that may have never been given with consent.

The top security agency made the confessions in a new email that was first spotted by 404 Media. They spoke about tracing people down through a monitoring tool found on a mobile phone.

The content of the email screenshot in transcript form:

------ start -------

Please see the below response from INV. In addition, if a SME is needed, Supervisory Cyber-Financial Forensic Analyst ███████ will be your POC. Please keep INV-SP in the loop with any additional needs.

Whether the Secret Service is obtaining a warrant before querying the Locate X service to track the movement of a phone located in the United States.

No.

Whether the Secret Service's general counsel has taken the position that purchased location data is not subject to protections under the Fourth Amendment

On September 25, 2020, the DHS Office of the General Counsel issued a memorandum on the use of commercially available geolocation data associated with the advertising identifier (AdID). The Senior Official Performing the Duties of the General Counsel determined that the use of AdID data can continue being incorporated into investigative techniques and protocols without a warrant, because there is "a strong argument that the use of AdID data does not constitute a 'search." This memorandum was specific to the use of AdID data by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The USSS, as a component of DHS, relies on this memorandum as instructive.

What steps the Secret Service has taken to verify that the location data it purchased from Babel Street was obtained by consumers who consented to the onwards sale and sharing of the data* and not just to the initial collection and use by a mobile app.

None.

-------- end ----------

The email brings to light for the first time how the Secret Service and a host of leading American federal agencies might be monitoring citizens unlawfully through data taken commercially. Without a warrant and consent attained, this could be categorized as unlawful behavior/activity.

More information about the tool was released including how it’s dubbed Locate X and under the ownership of Babel Street. The email shared from 2022 had the Secret Service provide exact details on which steps it took to verify the data that was bought from the company. Also, it was asked which measures it implemented to make sure consumers provided consent to selling and sharing of data.

Remember, location data can arise from a host of different sources. This includes some apps found on different people’s phones including weather and navigation. To many people’s dismay, their answer was none and consumers were stunned. Remember, this is American leading security agency for intelligence and it’s alarming for it to not verify the information.

A few weeks back, reports from 404 Media were published that put never-before-seen pictures with details on display about Locate X. In the demo videos that were leaked, one user drew geofence around a specific area and that followed mobile phones that were in the location.

There was one instance where users could track movements for the phones that paid visits to sensitive areas like abortion clinics. There was another bombshell email where officials from the Secret Service squad would argue over warrants needed for using Locate X.

For usual cellphone history data, warrants are needed but when consent is provided, no such warrant is necessary. This is because people agree to the terms of service put forward. But the latest email on discussion shows how that was not provided.

It’s outrageous to make claims about users waiving off privacy rights for any agency from the government that wishes to attain location data. Looking back at 2022, the Secret Service shared more about how no action was further taken on this front.

Instead, they tried to justify the act at first with claims about using different tools in investigations that apply to current policies and laws. Whatever the case might be, it’s alarming to see what happened and how big agencies are breaking the law by utilizing commercially attained location information. There was even one case in the discussion where a leading official used the information to track the locations of different colleagues without any real purpose.

Image: DIW-Aigen

Read next:

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Study Reveals AI's Growing Role in Job Loss Across Writing and Design Fields

New research by Imperial College London highlights growing concerns about AI's impact on the labor market. While a decade-old Oxford University study examined technology's effects on employment, these concerns have intensified with AI's increasing integration into everyday life. The study by Imperial College looks at effects AI can cause in the freelance market such as graphic designing and content writing. For the study, the researchers looked at 1.4 million freelancing jobs posted on different websites from July 2021 and July 2023. The results of the study showed that there was a 30% drop in jobs related to content writing because of artificial intelligence. Even though there is only a slight drop in jobs related to web development and software development due to AI, the jobs are still less than what they were before AI. There was also some drop in jobs related to graphic designing and 3D Modeling after AI models like DALL-E-2 and Midjourney got introduced.

The researchers say that this drop doesn't seem to be temporary because now companies are experimenting with newer technologies which can make their work easier and automated. The researchers compared this decline in jobs caused by AI to the loss of factory jobs during the automation era, when robots replaced human workers. But the drop because of robotic implementation in factories wasn't as much as drop in jobs due to current AI wave. One of the researches show that when there was a 20% increase in robots adoption in France, there was only a 3% drop in jobs in industries and factories. This is actually concerning, especially the drop in content writing jobs because it makes us question our capabilities as AI is more than enough to write content. But there are many problems regarding ChatGPT’s research on various topics and the content it produces doesn't stand out too much.

• Related: The Hidden Cost of Innovation: How Tech Giants Are Funding the Backbone of AI

University of Alberta names content generated by AI as “botshit” and University of Zurich says that AI generated content is less trustworthy to readers if it is labeled as AI generated. Instead of completely relying on AI, organizations are asking writers to oversee AI generated content and make it more human-like. This means a pay cut for writers and they cannot show their capabilities and creativity fully, as well as their identity and motivation. Employees are not happy with this deployment of AI because it is adding no value to the work and they cannot engage fully with what they work for.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

From Algorithms to Cancellations: Why Streaming Services Leave Subscribers Overwhelmed

A survey of 2,000 American streaming subscribers by UserTesting reveals 20% find it harder to choose content today than a decade ago. A total of 120 hours per year are spent by scrolling through streaming services because users cannot find something to watch. Even though there is too much content on streaming services nowadays, subscribers seem to be overwhelmed with the amount of content that they end up watching nothing at all. 26% of the respondents said that there is too much original content that is being produced while 41% said that they get confused about what to watch because there is too much to watch in content libraries.

75% of the respondents said that the algorithm of their streaming service is helpful for them as it recommends things to watch according to their taste, but 51% admitted that they get overwhelmed with the recommendations because they want to watch everything at once. 48% of the respondents of the survey admitted not having traditional cable TV now, with 43% saying that they choose to watch content on streaming services because it has variety and 34% said that the content they like to watch isn't on traditional TV. 29% also said that it is also easy to watch content streaming services while on-the-go as compared to traditional cable.

Even though many people are choosing streaming services, 51% are still dissatisfied with it and say that they should have more options and the streaming services. 40% defined their dream streaming service as the streaming platform with premium channels with no additional cost and 39% defined it as a platform where they can easily navigate through content. There were also respondents who said that they like it when a streaming service has an easy to navigate interface (52%).

11% of the respondents said that they are willing to pay more than $100 for a streaming service if it has all the features and content they want, while most of the respondents said that an average $46 a month is best for streaming service subscription. 79% of the respondents said that they feel extreme frustration if the streaming service they are using charge extra for some selected content, with 59% saying that it is very unlikely that they pay for that additional content and 77% saying that they watch something else instead. 19% also said that they often subscribe to the free trial of a platform if it has the content they want to watch.

69% of the respondents reported opening an account on a streaming service and subscribing to it only to find out that it doesn't have the content they were looking for. 56% said that they cancel their subscription on a streaming platform as soon as they finish the show they were watching, but 23% said that they have faced difficulties while cancelling the subscription. 36% said that they found the cancellation process of subscriptions on streaming platforms too difficult and with multiple steps.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Global Survey Unveils Influencer Aspirations, Social Media Trends, and AI's Growing Role in Content Creation

IZEA’s Influencer Aspirations report is here which provides some insights for different influencers, who have already become one and the ones who are aspiring to become one, and how influencer marketing is playing an important role in the lives of many consumers. For the report, a total of 6,000 social media users were surveyed from 6 countries, 1,000 each from one country. According to the survey, 25% of the respondents who use social media consider themselves influencers, with most of it seen in China (45%), followed by the US (27%) and UK (21%). Only 7% of the respondents who were surveyed had over 500k followers. Most of the respondents had less than 1,000 followers.

Respondents were asked if they personally know someone who makes money from social media influencing, and 43% respondents answered with yes. Most of the respondents who said that they know someone who earns money as a social media influencer were from China (68%), followed by Mexico (41%) and the US (40%). China also leads with most respondents aspiring to become influencers (60%), followed by Mexico (45%) and Canada (28%). This trend was not seen much in the US and it seems like not many people in the US aspire to become influencers.

63% of the respondents of the survey were also ready to quit their jobs if they can make a living as a social media influencer. 79% of the respondents from Mexico said so, followed by 62% respondents from Canada and 61% from China. When influencers were asked what their employment status was, 68% of the influencers said that they work full time, with most of the influencers from China working full time (83%). The survey also found that most of the influencers are more likely to be self-employed than general social media users.

• Also read: Stop Guessing, Start Knowing: The Social Media Tools You Need for 2025

When respondents were asked if they would accept payments or free products from brands to promote their products, 78% answered with yes. 45% of the influencers from China said that they received payment from the brand for a sponsored post. As it's the era of technology, respondents were also asked if they use AI for creating content they post on social media. 59% of the social media users said that they use AI tools for their posts, with 48% of the respondents from China saying that they use them often, followed by 36% from Mexico and 27% from the US.

In case of most hours spent on social media, Mexico led the list with respondents using social media for an average 6.8 hours, followed by average 6.4 hours a day spent by respondents in China and 5.8 hours average spent by respondents in the US. The survey also found that social media users who spent more than average 5 hours on social media are 3.2 more likely to get paid by brands to promote their products.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Did Apple Keep You in the Dark About Data Sharing in ‘Enhanced Visual Search’?

Tech giant Apple is known for its stronghold on privacy measures and ensuring users’ data remains safe. However, a recently published blog by Jeff Johnson is raising the curtain on a feature for iPhone users that might be doing more than promised.

The feature in question for iOS users is called ‘Enhanced Visual Search’ and when this toggle is on for the device’s Photos app, usually by default, it’s giving the phone permission to share information from the saved photos with Apple.

Image: lapcatsoftware

Many were quick to check if that was indeed true and they were amazed how they had no idea. The feature allows users to search for some top-notch landmarks that they’ve previously captured and even explore more pictures using the same names. All in all, it does make the search process much more defined but the cost is users’ privacy.

This is not the first time that we’ve seen Apple turn back on its own claims. It previously tarnished its reputation of being a strong privacy enthusiast when collecting users’ interactions with voice assistant Siri.

If you want to experience it too, simply swipe on an image that you took of a building and click on ‘Look up Landmark’. You’ll find a card pop-up that really identifies you. Several examples were also shared to prove the point.

For many, a first glance shows nothing alarming. It’s a simple and very convenient expansion for the already popular Visual Look Up that was rolled out on iOS 15. However, the latter never required additional permission to share more information with the iPhone maker but this one does.

You can find descriptions under every toggle that speak about Apple providing permission to silently match locations in the images with global indexes that are covered by Apple. You can get more information through the blog including how the feature really works to give you regions of interest related to the landmark you’re in search of.

As per this blog, the embedded vector gets encrypted and shared with Apple so that it can be compared with the database. You’ll see the iPhone maker provide its fair share of explanations on this front through technical means. This is a part of Apple’s research blog and if you ask us, not a lot of it makes sense.

For now, we’re in search of Apple’s response on this front. They didn’t provide any immediate reply on whether the accusations of data sharing were true or not. For now, it appears the firm went to long lengths to ensure information remains private.

We feel that making this toggle a feature where users could opt-in was a better way to go about the whole situation. Right now, it seems like Apple tried to keep the fact that data was shared with the company under wraps, and for any company, that’s never a good look.

Read next: The Hidden Cost of Innovation: How Tech Giants Are Funding the Backbone of AI
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

The Hidden Cost of Innovation: How Tech Giants Are Funding the Backbone of AI

With more usage of AI tech and new technology, many tech giants are investing billions of dollars for AI data centers so they can meet the demand for computational energy that can handle the latest AI infrastructure and workload. Data centers have hefty operating costs but they make the running of AI data centers possible. Data from JP Morgan and New Street Research shows how much big techs are spending on AI data centers, including software, operating expenses, depreciation and electricity.

The most investment on AI data centers is being done by Microsoft, with most spent on GPUs($20 billion) and other AI spend ($20 billion) which makes total capex of $40 billion. The cost spent on training and R&D by Microsoft is $3 billion, cost on inference is $3 billion which makes total operating cost of $6 billion. This makes a total of $46 billion that Microsoft is spending on AI data centers. The second most spendings on AI data centers is by Google, with a total of $33 billion. The total capital expenditure by Google is $29 billion while the operating costs are $4 billion.

• Related: Water Consumption By American Data Centers Jumps To Record High As Environmentalists Warn Of Devastating Consequences

Followed by Google, Meta is spending the third most on AI data centers, with $23 billion total capex, $11 billion on GPUs and other chips while $12 billion on other AI spend. The total operating cost of AI data centers that Meta is spending on is $4 billion and this makes a total of $27 billion that Meta is spending on AI data centers. Amazon is also investing a lot on its AI data centers, with a total of $19 billion. $8 billion are spent on GPUs and other chips, while $8 billion is the other AI spend. The total capital expenditure on AI data centers by Amazon is $16 billion while $3 billion is the total operating cost. Google and Amazon are spending a lot on training their AI models and the training cost for AI models is getting more and more expensive.

• Also read: Data Center Surge: USA Tops Global List with 5,388 Centers, AI Adoption Fuels Growth

The most data centers are owned by Microsoft (300), followed by 215 data centers of Amazon. Microsoft has partnered up with BlackRock to start a $100 billion plan through Global Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure that will focus on developing AI data centers and provide energy which will support those AI data centers.

Company	Spending on GPUs and Other Chips	Other AI-related Expenses	Total Capital Expenditures	Spending on Training and Research	Spending on Inference	Total Operating Costs
Microsoft	$20 billion	$20 billion	$40 billion	$3 billion	$3 billion	$6 billion
Meta	$11 billion	$12 billion	$23 billion	$2 billion	$2 billion	$4 billion
Google	$14 billion	$15 billion	$29 billion	$3 billion	$1 billion	$4 billion
Amazon	$8 billion	$8 billion	$16 billion	$2 billion	$1 billion	$3 billion

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World