Two years ago, Instagram head Adam Mosseri told YouTubers Colin and Samir he wasn’t interested in long-form video. He worried it would erode what he called Instagram’s core reason to exist: connecting friends. This week, Instagram started testing a long-form video format called Features that lets creators upload horizontal videos, podcasts, vlogs, and interviews up to 90 minutes long. “I have been against doing long-form video on the platform for a long time,” Mosseri said. Now, he’s been sold on the need to “lean into” it, because Instagram wants to “show up where people are.”
Features is rolling out as a test with a small group of creators in the U.S., and Instagram has already been testing it in Brazil. The company plans to expand to tens of thousands of U.S. creators. The videos will show up in the main feed and on the Explore page. Early participants include Skims co-founder and podcast host Emma Grede, beauty and fashion creator Monet McMichael, Preston Rakovsky, who interviews New Yorkers about love and relationships, and football content creator Donald De La Haye.
The whole point of this new format is to build a funnel. Select creators can post “Linked Reels,” short clips that link to the full-length Feature, so a viewer who sees a snippet of a podcast can click to watch the whole thing. Instagram says Reels already travel through DMs and group chats, so a clip sent to a friend now works as a recommendation for a long video too. Instagram is also rebuilding its TV app to prioritize Features on Samsung, Fire TV, and Google TV, with Apple TV coming soon. “We think the best viewing experience for longform horizontal content is on a big, horizontal screen,” said Instagram VP of product Tessa Lyons.
But that’s not all. Instagram is expanding a test of Series, a dedicated home for episodic Reels on a creator’s profile, partly driven by the popularity of microdramas. It plans to let people use their phones as a remote for the TV app and pause on mobile to resume on TV, and Lives will be discoverable in the Reels tab beyond a creator’s followers. Background playback, which would let people leave the app and keep listening, is a possibility Mosseri says could come later.
It’s clear that these changes are a direct response to Instagram competitor, YouTube. But YouTube pays qualified creators 55 percent of ad revenue. Instagram has no revenue-sharing program for long-form video, and a spokesperson said it’s “too early to share a long-term monetization model.” According to analysis by VidIQ, YouTube generally pays between $1 and $10 per 1,000 long-form views, while Instagram monetization based on views alone is “effectively zero” without a brand deal. VidIQ says creators with more than a million subscribers earn about $50,000 a month on average on YouTube, versus $5,000 to $15,000 on Instagram.
Instead, Instagram is paying up front. Business Insider reported the company offered select creators $50,000 to post long-form video, with some six-figure deals reaching $500,000. Meta didn’t confirm the details, saying only that it’s “funding Features content directly with some creators.” It seems like existing ad deals will carry over into the videos, and there’s no exclusivity, unlike Netflix’s podcast deals. This isn’t the first time Meta has tried this approach. It pledged $1 billion to creators in 2022, including special payments for IGTV content, though it shut down the IGTV app later that year. One trade analysis noted that one-time payments tend to cause a spike in posting that fades without a sustainable revenue share. “The economics matter a ton,” Mosseri acknowledged.
Only time will tell if this new format will work for Instagram or become another trend that fades away. Because it seems that if Instagram really wants hour-long videos, it will eventually have to pay for them, as YouTube does.