Topics · Audience
Connected audience
On Instagram, a creator’s connected audience is the people who already follow the account, and connected reach counts how many of those followers actually saw a post12. Instagram treats reaching existing followers and finding interested people who do not follow an account as two distinct tasks3. In May 2026, Adam Mosseri recommended checking follower and non-follower reach alongside engagement rates in Insights to understand why one post or reel performs differently from another1.
Follower ranking, reach measurement and distribution standards
Instagram tries to find as many existing followers as possible who would be interested in a creator’s post3. When a follower opens Instagram, it compares that post with the other posts the person could see and orders them by how relevant they are likely to be3.
For connected-audience performance, Mosseri says like rates matter more among followers1. The comparison measure, unconnected reach, counts people who saw a post without following the account1. For those viewers, he says send rates matter more1.
Instagram for Creators says content that fails its Recommendation Guidelines can still be distributed normally to an account’s followers4. It applies a higher standard when recommending content to non-followers because those people have not explicitly chosen to see the account’s content4.
See also
References
- 1A few tips on how to read your insights, particularly engagement rates and connected versus unconnected reach.
- 2I’m going to break down how ranking works on Instagram in a series of videos in a way that hopefully helps creators best leverage the platform.
- 3Adam Mosseri gives insight on how Instagram ranking works!
- 4What Creators Need To Know About Instagram Recommendations