Paid media increases across social media with Snapchat & Instagram recording huge growth 73% and 55% as new offline features brought added value to advertisers, according to a report by data science company, 4C Insights (4C).

For Snapchat, features like Snap Map and geofilters have enabled advertisers to understand how consumers shop. Snapchat's AR feature already helped it march ahead of rivals Facebook and Apple for daily users. Whereas, InstagramStories continued to attract brands, generating 220% year-on-year spend growth.

Emily Kramer, senior director, media services, Merkle said: “Vertical video provides brands with a full-scale canvas to test creative. Audience-driven optimisation becomes low-risk and high-reward, with lots of opportunity to scale learning across the media mix."

4C further reported that Facebook ad spend grew 27% for the quarter courtesy Facebook’s detailed targeting and measurement capabilities. Twitter ad spend grew 26% for the quarter fostered by ad spend on Twitter by travel industry which surged 250%.

As for Pinterest, the growth of 26% for the quarter and 33% over the year was a result of growing popularity of visual content.

Scott Shamberg, president, Performics said: “Pinterest has made great strides on the tech side of visual search, with Lens, Shop the Look and Instant Ideas. All of these products have huge implications for retailers with an e-commerce presence. Lens is built for the visual search trend, but consumer and brand adoption hasn’t quite caught up.”

Aaron Goldman, chief marketing officer at 4C Insights added: “Understanding visual content through Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will add a new level of consumer understanding and help brands be more relevant at the right time and place.”

4C analyzed nearly $250m in media spend from more than 1,000 individual brands managed through its platform, 4C Social.