Instagram expected to have more advertisers than Twitter by next year

As Twitter struggles to keep advertisers interested, Instagram may soon take a lead over its beleaguered competitor.

A new report from market research firm Emarketer is projecting a big jump in the number of American brands that will make use of the Facebook-owned image-sharing app in the coming year.

The study predicts that nearly three quarters of American companies with 100 employees or more will turn to Instagram for marketing purposes in 2017 — up from a little more than half this year.

Meanwhile, Twitter's popularity among marketers is expected to continue to stagnate at around 66 percent. According to the firm's data, the number of brands using Twitter has grown less than two percent since 2014.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The numbers fit with other surveys that have painted a grim picture for Twitter's advertising prospects. A research report from RBC Capital last summer found that an increasing number of marketers planned to decrease ad spending on the site.

The findings come as Twitter has been laying off employees after months of sluggish user growth and a failure to woo a buyer despite interest from several high-profile suitors.

Instagram's ad business, on the other hand, has been growing at a rapid clip; the social network has more than doubled its number of advertisers this year, surpassing half a million this fall.

The growth matches that of parent company Facebook, which has proven to be a massive mobile advertising juggernaut. Yet Emarketer says Facebook will see just a half-a-percentage-point bump in the next year — from 85.3 to 85.8 percent — which may be evidence of its executives' fears that the company is approaching market saturation.

The Emarketer report also singled out Youtube as another advertising platform for which growth is faltering, despite a predicted jump in marketers from 45.6 to 48.2 percent.