Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Instagram isn’t the biggest moneymaker for Facebook, but it certainly plays a major role in generating revenue for the social media company. Bloomberg reports today that the app brought in $20 billion in advertising revenue last year, which accounts for more than a quarter of Facebook’s overall 2019 revenue.
Ads show up on Instagram in between Stories, within the feed, and on the Explore tab. The Instagram team has increasingly figured out how to wedge ads between users’ content.
This sales figure is particularly interesting in light of Google’s admission yesterday that YouTube generated $15 billion in ad revenue last year, or about 10 percent of Google’s overall revenue. Unlike YouTube, Instagram doesn’t share any of its ad revenue with…