NFTs are taking off on Instagram

With influencers and digital artists leading the way, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are taking Meta’s Instagram by storm.

Data from influencer marketing platform HypeAuditor shows:

• Over 20,00 accounts with “NFT” in the bio, most (over 40%) U.S.-based.
• Over 900 million followers for those accounts.
• Over 100,000 posts monthly using the hashtag #NFT.

Who is running these accounts? HypeAuditor sorts the NFT accounts into the following five categories:

1. Influencers and celebrities.
2. Digital creators of NFTs.
3. Topic pages about NFTs.
4. NFT collections.
5. NFT/crypto advisory accounts.

For example, the most followed NFT-related account, that of Brazilian soccer star Daniel Alves (over 36 million followers) announces its affiliation with Club Gorgon, a members-only “phygital art club.”

Support from Instagram. Earlier this month, Instagram announced its support for digital creators and collectors showcasing NFTs on the platform. Creators and collectors will be able to share digital collectibles by connecting their digital wallets to the site.

In the announcement, Instagram said: “It’s critical that our early efforts in this space empower diverse voices and that underrepresented groups have access to emerging digital assets like NFTs. By building support for NFTs, we aim to improve accessibility, lower barriers to entry, and help make the NFT space more inclusive to all communities.”

Why we care. Where are the brands? Among the top 100 NFT-related accounts identified by HypeAuditor, only sneaker store KicksOnFire stands out as a brand. (Not counting celebrities as brands, which may be controversial.)

There seems to be a solid trend here and it’s surprising that brands boasting cutting-edge marketing strategies aren’t yet showing up.

Read next: Metaverse marketers favor virtual reality over NFTs

About The Author

Kim Davis is the Editorial Director of MarTech. Born in London, but a New Yorker for over two decades, Kim started covering enterprise software ten years ago. His experience encompasses SaaS for the enterprise, digital- ad data-driven urban planning, and applications of SaaS, digital technology, and data in the marketing space. He first wrote about marketing technology as editor of Haymarket’s The Hub, a dedicated marketing tech website, which subsequently became a channel on the established direct marketing brand DMN. Kim joined DMN proper in 2016, as a senior editor, becoming Executive Editor, then Editor-in-Chief a position he held until January 2020. Prior to working in tech journalism, Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.