Instagram has grown its advertiser base to more than 1m monthly active advertisers, more than doubling the number of advertisers in the past six months and increasing it five-fold in the past 12 months. Additionally, the company has revealed that more than 8m businesses are now using a business profile on Instagram, with the greatest adoption coming from the UK, US, Brazil, Indonesia and Russia.

The numbers are an endorsement of Instagram’s efforts to provide tools to make it easy for businesses to advertise on its platform. Companies can create an ad from a business profile in as little as four taps.

The majority of Instagram’s advertisers are small businesses, such as SpearmintLOVE, a website selling infant and toddler clothing and accessories. Founder and CEO Shari Lott said: “Instagram gave us a chance to grow the business. From the beginning it was a community of fellow mums to help get the word out, then it was buyers tagging us in photos of products they think wed like for the shop, to increasing sales through adverts that reach people who were interested but had yet to buy.”

80 per cent of Instagrammers currently follow at least one business, and in the last month, over 120m Instagrammers visited a website, received directions, called, emailed or direct-messaged to learn about a business. Later this year, Instagram plans to roll out the ability to book a service with a business directly from their profile. It is also offers business users more insights on stories, posts saved and multi-post images, so that they have a better understanding of who their followers are.