Set Instagram Push Notification Targets

Business Context

Meta is planning next year's engagement targets for push notifications sent from Instagram on iOS and Android. Leadership wants a target-setting framework that grows meaningful engagement and retention without increasing notification fatigue, opt-outs, or low-quality re-engagement.

Metric Scenario

This year, Instagram sent 4.2B push notifications per month on average to 310M monthly push-reachable users. Average delivery rate was 96%, open rate was 11.8%, and 24-hour re-engagement rate after open was 38%. Push-attributed daily sessions were 145M per day, representing 18% of total Instagram sessions. However, monthly notification opt-out rate rose from 7.1% to 8.4%, and complaint/hide rates increased most for reactivation and creator-post alerts. Next year, Instagram's company goal is to increase retained engagement, with a proposed target of +8% push-attributed weekly active users while keeping opt-out growth below +0.5 percentage points.

Requirements

1. Define the primary KPI you would use to set next year's push notification target, and explain why it is better than simply targeting send volume or open rate.
2. Build a target-setting approach using this year's baseline, expected user growth, and quality guardrails.
3. Show how you would decompose the KPI by notification type, user cohort, and platform to identify realistic sub-targets.
4. Identify leading indicators and guardrail metrics you would monitor quarterly.
5. Explain how you would handle trade-offs between more sends, more opens, better downstream engagement, and long-term retention.

Data Available

• push_send_log: send_id, user_id, notification_type, campaign_id, send_time, delivered_flag, platform, country
• push_open_log: send_id, user_id, open_time
• instagram_sessions: user_id, session_id, session_start, session_length, entry_surface, attributed_send_id
• user_notification_settings: user_id, push_enabled_flag, opt_out_time, notification_preferences
• user_retention_daily: user_id, date, dau_flag, wau_flag, account_age_days, cohort_month