Instagram APIs for Custom Monitoring (Official vs Alternative APIs vs Scraping)
By Juan Combariza
October 2024 | 12 min. read
Table of Contents
Instagram API for Social Listening
Behind the brunch selfies and fashion haul posts, Instagram is ripe with rich information around audience sentiment. Instagram is the fourth most visited website in the world, with an estimated 62.7% of users following or researching brands on the platform. Large organizations have kept a pulse on social conversations for years, but weâve seen a surge in demand for insights teams (services or software platforms) to develop customized intelligence capabilities. This is made possible by hooking directly into an Instagram API, which facilitates access to raw Instagram data and allows for the manipulation of this data to craft customized intelligence outputs.
Instagram APIâs are often used to feed custom reports, dashboards, or proprietary AI models:
- Trend Prediction for Fashion: An insights platform might use predictive AI models that forecast upcoming fashion trends based on Instagram data. This enables their fashion brand customers to stay ahead of the curve by adapting their designs and inventory accordingly.Â
- Market Strategy Reports for Brands: A large marketing agency collaborates with a Fortune 500 brand to collect extensive online data, offering deeper insights than traditional focus groups. This comprehensive view reveals customer perception towards products & marketing campaigns.
- Threat Intelligence Monitoring: A threat intelligence platform monitors online conversations on Instagram to detect potential threats to a company, individual, or corporation which could range from cyber threats to physical threats.Â
Note from the author:
Our platform facilitates the integration of these APIs, so weâve helped dozens of data product teams, outsourced dev. agencies, and in-house insights departments build pipelines to connect Instagram data into bespoke tools. I wrote this blog to outline the different data access methods available, assessing data capabilities and setup effort, with a focus on custom social media monitoring as the primary application.
Understanding Instagram Data Access
What is an Instagram API?
An Instagram API (Application Programming Interface) is a set of tools that allow developers to interact with the functionalities and data of Instagram. Think of it as a bridge between Instagramâs extensive database and your own applications. APIs can also be used as a way to enable functionalities in a product, such as automated scheduling.Â
The focus of this blog is on the extraction of insights (instead of other API functionalities like post scheduling or account management).
Instagram API v.s. Social Listening Tools
Tools like Meltwater and Brandwatch allow brands to easily monitor Instagram conversations through pre-configured, code-free setups. In contrast, Instagram APIs present a low-code solution to integrate data feeds into custom tools. This approach offers granular customizability of data flows and the ability to implement deeper AI enrichments, differentiating your social listening solutions from existing players.
Instagram API Integration Methods & Costs
Data collection is only the first step in the supply chain of insights. You will still need a data pipeline infrastructure that will move and refine the raw information into clear intelligence.
Consider this simplified pipeline model:
Option A: Build your own API infrastructure
While constructing REST API connectors from vendors into your systems seems straightforward, this approach often only addresses the initial and final stages of data handling (steps 1 and 6), potentially leaving gaps that impact the quality of insights you provide to your customers.
Option B: Pre-built pipeline platform
Pre-built pipeline components significantly cut down the time needed to add sophisticated data control into your social insights pipelines. Instead of individually maintaining 6-7 different API connectors (blogs feeds, news feeds, social feeds), you can consolidate them into 1 platform that enriches data utility and increases its strategic value.
Option 1: Official Instagram API
Overview:Â
The official Instagram API, developed and maintained by Instagram itself, is crafted to offer regulated and structured access to the platform’s extensive data. This API is designed to ensure that third-party developers and businesses can interact with Instagram’s features and data in a way that upholds the platform’s strict data privacy rules and user protections.
Capabilities
- User Profile Access: Basic information on profiles that you manage, including user IDs, usernames, bios, and profile pictures.
- Post Metadata: Caption, media type, media URL, timestamp, hashtags and tagged users.
- Engagement Metrics: Likes, comments, tagged users in comments, and shares for posts made by an account you manage.
- Account Analytics: For business and creator accounts: Post performance (reach and performance), audience demographics, and other metrics you would see in the âinsightsâ tab of your IG account.
- Brand tags: You can retrieve posts where a brand or Business/Creator account is tagged (with an @), but this is restricted to content directly related to the accounts you manage.
- Hashtag searches: The only form of public data search that is available through the Instagram Graph API is hashtag search.
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Limitations
- Restricted to accounts you manage: Does not support the search of content based on location, keywords, or entity mentions.
- Only Identifies Direct Mentions:Â You will only be able to identify captions, comments, and media where an account has been directly tagged or @mentioned.
- Lack of user profile data: With the Instagram Graph API, you do not have access to any user profile metadata for profiles that you do not manage or own
- Rate Limits: The Instagram API enforces rate limits that cap the number of requests an application can make within a given time frame.
- Historical search: The Instagram Graph API provides limited access to historical data, as it is primarily focused on insights and analytics for Business and Creator accounts
Instagram Graph API v.s. Basic Display API
Instagram Basic Display API: Restricted to personal accounts, this API doesn’t apply to Creator or Business profiles. It allows you to pull data solely from personal accounts that you’ve authenticated with login access. A typical scenario is using this API to display a personal Instagram feed on a website.
Instagram Graph API: The Graph API is designed for Instagram Business and Creator accounts. It is meant for businesses to retrieve data on posts, comments, and follower demographics for posts made by a business account you are managing.
Note: On September 4, 2024, Meta announced that the Instagram Basic Display API would become deprecated. You can retrieve data through the Instagram API with Instagram Login
Official Instagram API Pricing
There is no direct cost associated with accessing the Instagram Graph API itself, as it is provided by Facebook (Meta) for free. The actual use of the API can carry indirect costs, including the wages for developers and the overheads for server and pipeline infrastructure. Although it is free, using the Instagram Graph API does require approval from Instagram and comes with API rate limits that vary based on your access level.
Option 2: Instagram API Alternatives (Third-Party APIs)
What is a third-party data collector?
Third-party APIs, or âunofficial APIsâ, are often favored for social listening as they gather extensive public data (posts, comments, user profiles) with their own independent collection methods. This data can then be queried or integrated through API commands, allowing access to a wide array of metadata that the official Instagram API lacks.
Third Party APIs typically do not require you to set up any scraping, greatly reducing legal and compliance risks.
Building Custom Instagram Monitoring for Your Clients?
The quality of third-party APIs varies widely. There is no shortage of horror stories of poorly maintained API environments, low data quality, or an inability to stay up to date with changes in Instagramâs platform. Datastreamer is not a data provider, but we’ve worked with dozens of third-party APIs and streamline your integration process:
- Tap into our pre vetted network of data providers
- See custom data engineering components that differentiateâ¨your insights from existing tools like Brandwatch
- Test drive a pipeline to run pricing scenarios with real-world usage metrics
Third-Party API Data Fields
Available metadata changes based on which third-party API you are using. This list is based on the Instagram data partners we’ve worked with in the past:
- Search Instagram Profiles: Profile name, profile URL, biography, links in bio, verified status, engagement metrics (followers, post count).
- Search Instagram Posts: Media type, media URL, captions, hashtags, mentions, comments, engagement metrics (likes and shares), timestamps.
- Monitor Real-Time Instagram Data: Access real-time data to gain proactive insights, such as establish alerts for customer service or assess real-time perceptions concerning entities.
- Search Historical Instagram data: Depending on the vendor, access historical data that can span back several years. Feed this into trend or sentiment analysis that looks at conversation topics over time.
Capabilities (Social Listening)
- Monitor Instagram Keywords & Phrases: Track specific keywords and phrases across social media posts and comments. For example, track “sustainable fashion” to analyze how often it’s discussed across social platforms and understand the sentiment around sustainable materials in the apparel industry.
- Monitor Instagram Profiles: Keep tabs on the activity of specific user profiles, including updates, posts, and public interactions. For example, monitor the profile of influencer (@janedoe) to observe engagement trends and the effectiveness of her promotional posts for various brands.
- Monitor Instagram Hashtags: Follow specific hashtags to capture all related content, providing insights into discussions around a specific topic. For example, follow the hashtag #TechInnovation2024 to gauge pre-event buzz and attendees expectations.
- Monitor Instagram Brand Mentions: Automatically detect and analyze mentions of a brand across social media to understand audience perception. For example, set up alerts for any mentions of “Starbucks” to gather feedback on new product launches or store openings.
- Monitor Instagram Mentions of Products, Places, People: Use Entity Recognition, an AI model with greater accuracy than keyword searches, to track mentions of products, places, or notable individuals to gather detailed insights into the perception and popularity of these subjects. For example, track mentions of “Tesla Model Y” across social media to collect user opinions and common issues.
Capabilities (Data Enhancement)
- Customization in collection: Certain vendors permit collection customization requests, such as increasing the frequency of collection for a list of specific profiles.
- Enrichments: Some third-party APIs include standard data enrichments like sentiment analysis and entity recognition. Advanced enrichments, like detecting action intent, enhancing location data, or translating languages, can be added by using a pipeline platform.
- Multiple Platforms Supported: Many third-party APIs collect data from multiple social media platforms, providing broader coverage for a more complete analysis of social conversations.
- Advanced filtering: With a pipeline platform, raw Instagram data feeds can be filtered and routed based on metadata conditions. For example, data streams can be distilled down to core elements (keywords/phrases), and then have all results translated into English.
Limitations
- Data Interruptions: Since alternative APIs collect data as a third-party, a major Instagram platform update may disrupt collection while data aggregators adjust their tech to align with new changes.
- Data Quality: Data integrity is dependent on the technology employed to collect it. Less sophisticated third-party APIs may only capture only a limited subset of the available data.
- Developer Friendliness: Poorly built API environments can slow down speed-to-market speeds and create a recurring headache for developers tasked with maintaining integrations.
Are Third-Party Instagram APIs Legal?
Leveraging third-party APIs to access public data is generally legal and commonly utilized by large companies. Nonetheless, conducting proper due diligence remains important:
- Understand compliance requirements with local privacy laws (GDPR or CCPA), as these regulations govern how personal data can be collected, stored, and processed.Â
- Ensure the intended use of the data and the handling of information within your pipeline align with legal and ethical guidelines.
Pricing for Instagram API AlternativesÂ
- Usage based data consumption: Pricing often depends on the volume of data accessed via API calls. Prices are tied to the scope of data queries, such as hashtag searches, profile analysis, and the choice between historical or real-time data access.
- Pipeline infrastructure costs: There are costs associated with the underlying infrastructure required to support the data pipeline. This includes servers, data storage, and the network resources needed to process and handle the data streams efficiently.
- Integration setup & maintenance: Â Labor costs are involved in both the development of API connectors and their ongoing maintenance to ensure stable connections to diverse data sources
Running a Pilot Pipeline To Forecast Costs
Estimating the exact costs of using third-party Instagram APIs can be complex due to the variability in data usage and API call frequency. Since insights teams rarely know their exact data usage ahead of time, the most effective method to predict expenses is by conducting a pilot test.
Running a scaled-down version of the intended data pipeline allows teams to gather actual usage statistics, providing a realistic basis for cost projections
Option 3: Instagram Scraping
What is Instagram Scraping?
Instagram scraping is a method where data is programmatically extracted directly from the web pages of Instagram. This technique involves writing scripts or using software that simulates the actions of a web browser to gather visible data from the platformâs frontend. While scraping can provide access to a wide range of data that might not be available through official channels, it requires a solid understanding of both programming and the legal implications involved.
Capabilities
- Comprehensive Data Extraction: Scrapers can be tailored to collect detailed information from Instagram, such as user comments, post timings, and hashtag usage, which are visible on public profiles and pages.
- High Customizability: Since scraping scripts are custom-built, they can be designed to meet specific data requirements, targeting exactly what is needed without redundancy.
Limitations
- Fragility of Setup: Instagram frequently updates its site layout and underlying code, which can render scrapers obsolete overnight. This requires constant maintenance of scraping scripts to ensure they remain effective.
- Legal and Compliance Risks: Scraping data from Instagram can breach the terms of service set out by the platform, potentially leading to legal actions or bans from the site. Moreover, data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA impose additional layers of compliance, which scraping might violate.
- Data Integrity Issues: Data collected via scraping is only as good as the scraperâs design and the public visibility of data. Automated scrapers may not always interpret page layouts and data formats consistently, particularly if Instagram changes its interface.
Costs
- Initial Setup Costs: While starting costs for scraping can be minimalâespecially if using open-source tools or low-code toolsâthe real investment is in the development of robust scraping scripts.
- Maintenance Expenses: Ongoing costs can escalate due to the need for regular updates and troubleshooting of scraping scripts to keep up with changes on Instagramâs platform.
- Infrastructure Costs: Establishing custom scrapers addresses the initial data collection needs, but a real-time data pipeline to power an insights solution involves additional infrastructure. This adds overhead costs for data handling, processing, and storage.
Strategic Considerations
While scraping might seem like a low-cost solution for accessing extensive data from Instagram, it comes with significant operational and legal risks that can affect its overall viability and sustainability. Businesses considering this approach must carefully evaluate their capability to manage these risks and the potential impact on their operations and reputation.