Apps & Consumer
Instagram tests up to 90-minute videos to chase YouTube's ad money
Instagram is testing "Features," videos up to 90 minutes long, as it looks to challenge YouTube's lead in paying creators directly.
Instagram announced Monday that it’s testing a new video format called “Features,” letting creators upload videos up to 90 minutes long — a reversal after years in which Instagram, TikTok and even LinkedIn pushed short-form, vertical video as the industry default. Instagram tried something similar eight years ago with IGTV, a long-form product it later discontinued.
The gap is in monetization. Short-form clips leave little room for ads, which is partly why Instagram and TikTok have never matched YouTube’s revenue split with creators, and many creators still treat those accounts as promotional feeders for their YouTube channels rather than meaningful revenue sources. YouTube shares 55% of ad revenue with creators enrolled in its Partner Program, and the company said last year it had paid creators, artists and media companies more than $100 billion over the previous four years. Instagram, by contrast, leans on brand deals and a small, money-losing performance-based payout program. “We spend more money than we make back by a long shot, and so it doesn’t really make sense to scale up because we’re just burning capital,” Mosseri said in an interview on the Colin and Samir Show, a program covering the creator economy. A Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch it’s too early to settle on a long-term monetization plan, but said the company is exploring ways for creators to earn from brands, fans and the platform itself, including performance-based incentives.
Mosseri said he had long resisted longer videos on Instagram, noting that Reels drive more shares and direct messages among users than longer clips do. Tessa Lyons, Instagram’s VP of product, pushed for the change and eventually won him over. The company is testing “Features” alongside a separate tool, “Clips as Reels,” which lets creators cut short clips from their long-form videos that link viewers back to the full upload; viewers can also save a long-form video to watch later on a TV. Both features are being piloted in Brazil and are now expanding to a small group of users in the U.S., alongside separate work on Live-video discovery and a profile hub for episodic Reels.
Why it matters
If Meta follows through on running ads against long-form video, Instagram could compete with YouTube’s Partner Program for creator loyalty for the first time — a shift that would reshape where creators choose to publish and monetize their biggest videos.