The Budget Call: Auditing an Instagram Format-Performance Export

Marketing Academy · Field Work●Social Media Marketing

All projects·From: Instagram Algorithm & Content Strategy in 2026

MiniAudit· 30 minutes

Instacart

Objective: Given a real 20-post Instagram export mixing single images, carousels, and Reels with reach, saves, sends, and engagement rate, classify posts by format and recommend where next quarter's content budget should go.

You're the social media analyst at Instacart, the on-demand grocery delivery marketplace. You've pulled a 20-post export covering the last quarter and have one quarter's content production budget to allocate across formats.

Sort by format, compute engagement rate per post, and flag which format is the losing bet before a single new post gets briefed.

Before you start

What you'll need

Free path (everything below is enough to finish)

Google Sheets

FreeImport the export, compute engagement rate, and group by format

No account friction, handles a 20-row export without any paid analytics tool

The process

1 step

Step 01 of 01

Classifying posts by format performance signals before allocating content budget

The lesson's format-performance data shows single images down double digits year-over-year on reach, interactions, and engagement rate, while carousels and Reels have split the format landscape between them.

13 carousel rows, 5 Reel rows, 2 single-image rows in the export. Reach, saves, and sends-per-reach all trail on the single-image rows. Where does next quarter's budget go?

Google Sheets— Import the export, freeze the header row, add a computed `engagement_rate` column.

Procedure

Import and freeze row 1
Add a formula column: engagement_rate = (likes + comments + saves + shares) / reach
Sort descending by engagement_rate, then group by the `format` column
Compute the median engagement_rate per format group
Flag any single-image row scoring below the carousel median

Sample output

FORMAT MEDIANS (20 posts)
  Carousel (13 rows): 0.51% engagement, 9.2 avg saves
  Reel (5 rows): 0.47% engagement, 3.1 avg saves
  Single image (2 rows): 0.31% engagement, 1.0 avg saves

FLAGGED
  Post #14 (single image, produce recipe card): 0.22% engagement, below every carousel row

Healthy

Budget shifts toward carousels and Reels; single-image posts get reserved only for time-sensitive announcements.

Unhealthy

Continuing to brief single-image posts at the same rate as carousels because 'that's what we've always made'.

What this means

Format is the first filter, not caption quality; a well-written caption cannot fix a format the algorithm structurally under-serves.

So what do I do about it?

Symptom	Action	Effort
Content calendar still has single images as the default weekly post	Convert the weekly single-image slot to a 4-6 slide carousel using the same source asset	30 min
No one has checked whether Reels or carousels lead on saves this quarter	Add the engagement_rate formula column to the standing weekly reporting sheet	5 min

YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Final deliverable

A format-performance scorecard ranking single image, carousel, and Reel by median engagement rate and saves, with a budget-shift recommendation for next quarter.

See a reference example

Sample output

Adyen, Q3 Instagram format scorecard (excerpt)

CAROUSEL, 13 posts
  Median engagement: 0.51% | Median saves: 9.2
  Recommendation: increase to 3x/week

REEL, 5 posts
  Median engagement: 0.47% | Median saves: 3.1
  Recommendation: hold at 2x/week, strongest on reach

SINGLE IMAGE, 2 posts
  Median engagement: 0.31% | Median saves: 1.0
  Recommendation: reserve for same-day announcements only

Success criteria

You're done when you can:

Correctly groups all 20 rows by format and computes a median engagement rate per group
Flags the underperforming single-image row(s) by name, not just by format average
Recommendation ties a specific budget shift to the data, not a generic 'do more video' statement