Nearly every ad runs across both Facebook and Instagram at once. In the Hello Radio archive, a live archive of real ads from more than 300 brands refreshed every morning, only 2.7 percent of ads run on Instagram alone, and single-platform Facebook ads are rarer still. Measured August 2026 across more than 90,000 ads.
The idea that you choose between Facebook and Instagram is largely obsolete. What advertisers actually choose is how wide to open the placement set.
What the distribution looks like
| Placement set | Share of ads |
|---|---|
| Facebook and Instagram | 34.4% |
| Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads | 23.9% |
| Audience Network, Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads | 15.4% |
| Facebook, Instagram, Messenger | 6.4% |
| Facebook, Instagram, Threads | 6.1% |
| Instagram only | 2.7% |
| Audience Network, Facebook, Instagram, Messenger | 2.5% |
| Audience Network, Facebook, Instagram, Threads | 2.2% |
Add the top five rows and you have more than 86 percent of all ads running on both core platforms, with varying amounts of Messenger, Threads, and Audience Network layered on.
The practical reading: the default behavior of serious advertisers is broad placement, not platform selection.
Why broad placement is the norm
Two reasons, and both are about efficiency rather than preference.
The system finds cheap attention wherever it is. Restricting placements restricts where delivery can look for your buyer. A person who would have converted from a Stories placement is not going to convert from a feed placement they never saw.
Attention prices differ by surface. Some placements are consistently cheaper than others, and that varies by audience and by moment. Broad placement lets the system arbitrage that. Narrow placement pays a premium for a preference the customer does not share.
The main argument against broad placement is creative fit, which is real and addressable.
The creative problem with broad placement
A single square image does not work equally well everywhere. Feed placements favor square or portrait. Stories and Reels want full vertical. An asset built for one and stretched into another looks wrong, and looking wrong costs you.
This is where most advertisers actually lose money on placements. Not by choosing badly, but by running one aspect ratio everywhere and letting the platform crop it.
The fix is straightforward: supply the formats. Most ad builders let you upload a separate asset per placement type, and doing so is one of the cheapest performance improvements available. If you only produce one version, produce a vertical one, because it degrades more gracefully into a feed than a square does into a full-screen surface.
When narrowing placements makes sense
When you genuinely cannot supply vertical creative. Better to run well in feed than badly everywhere.
When a placement consistently underperforms in your own data. Not because you read that it does, but because you looked. Audience Network is the most common candidate here.
When brand context matters more than efficiency. Some advertisers care where their ads appear for reasons that are not about cost per result. That is a legitimate business decision.
Outside those cases, narrowing is usually paying more for less reach.
What this says about the Facebook versus Instagram question
The archive answers a common question implicitly. If the two platforms were meaningfully different marketing channels requiring different strategies, you would expect to see far more single-platform advertising than 2.7 percent.
You do not. Advertisers treat them as one surface with different presentation formats, which is effectively what they are. See Facebook ads versus Instagram ads for the deeper comparison.
Common questions
Should I use automatic placements?
For most advertisers, yes, provided you supply appropriate creative for the main formats. Broad placement lets delivery find cheaper attention. The archive shows this is what nearly all large advertisers do.
Can I run ads only on Instagram?
You can, and very few advertisers do. Only 2.7 percent of ads in the archive are Instagram only. Restricting to one platform usually raises costs without a corresponding benefit.
Do I need different creative for each placement?
Different aspect ratios, yes. Feed placements favor square or portrait, while Stories and Reels want full vertical. Supplying the right format per placement is one of the cheapest improvements available.
Is Audience Network worth including?
It depends on your own results. It appears in about a fifth of ads in the archive, usually as part of a broad set. If your data shows it underperforming for your product, exclude it. Do not exclude it on reputation alone.