Healthcare and pharma ad spending remains the smallest ad-spending category in the US due to restrictive compliance laws that make it difficult to target audiences, but the legalization of cannabis has helped bolster spending.

Tagger analyzed roughly 11.6 million Instagram posts from 161,000 US influencers from January 1–July 30, 2020, in the following categories: travel, beauty, cannabis, DIY, food and drink, family, fashion and style, lifestyle, sports and fitness, and media and publications. Engagement was defined as any type of interaction with influencer content, including likes, shares, comments and views.

One product boosting ad spending for the healthcare category is cannabis. As cannabis becomes legal in more states, cannabis advertisers are ramping up their spend. In 2018, US cannabis retail ad spend increased 23% to $4.12 million. Most of this spend came from out-of-home advertising. Digital display ads and mobile web accounted for 17% of the increase in overall ad spending between 2017 and 2018.