On Monday, Instagram started testing horizontal videos up to 90 minutes long with a small group of U.S. creators. The format, called Features, is aimed at the podcasters and comedians who built their audiences on YouTube.
It launched in Brazil first, and for now only creators with individual deals with Meta can post one.
Creators who post them won’t get a share of ad revenue. “It’s too early to share a long-term monetization model,” a Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch. YouTube gives creators in its Partner Program 55% of the ad revenue their videos earn, and it says it paid more than $100 billion to creators, artists and media companies over four years.
“For a long time, I have been against doing long-form video on Instagram,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri said, noting that Reels drive more shares and DMs. His case now is that short and long videos can be “symbiotic.” Creators can cut a long video into Reels that link back to the full upload, and full-length videos will get recommended on Explore, so a viral 60-second podcast clip can send someone straight to the 90-minute episode without leaving the app.
Mosseri said that’s still how most creators there get paid, along with some fan revenue and a “small performance-based program” he said Instagram loses money on.
VP of Product Tessa Lyons told The Hollywood Reporter that established creators can bring their existing sponsorships into the new format, and Meta says it will help creators who don’t have advertisers yet find brand partners.
The podcaster with three host-read ads in every episode comes out ahead. Those ads pay the same no matter where the episode is watched, and Instagram puts the episode in front of people who already follow the host. A creator who lives on YouTube ad revenue gets nothing new here.
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Instagram is also chasing the living room. Its TV app, which launched last year on Fire TV, has expanded to Apple TV in the U.S. and also runs on Samsung and Google TV devices, and viewers can send a long video from their phone to the TV. Mosseri admitted the TV experience will “take some time to get right.”
Instagram tried long video once before. IGTV launched in 2018 as a separate app for longer uploads, never caught on and was shut down in 2022. This time the videos live inside the main app, fed by Reels, and Mosseri says Meta is “very committed to it long term.”
