On Monday, Instagram announced Features: long-form videos up to 90-minutes that can be shared natively in-app and connected to short-form videos.
After covering the announcement on Monday, our comments were flooded with one primary critique:
“Yet again, Instagram fails to introduce revenue share to creators.”
“Why would anyone do this on instagram for no pay?”
“Until they start paying creators, no thank you.”
Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri responded on X: “We understand the economics matter a ton, and are exploring multiple options to help long-form creators get paid.”
Mosseri spoke briefly about monetization in his recent conversation on The Colin & Samir Show.
“There's three ways you can get paid at a high level: You can get paid by the platform directly. You can get paid by a fan, and you can get paid by a brand. And…we still have a small performance-based program,” Mosseri said. “But it's still, like I talked about last time for video anyway, ROI negative.”
While long-form creators want monetization incentives to move from YouTube to Instagram Features, Instagram has not found a financial model that makes that work.
“The reason for the pushback is because creators think the standard when it comes to monetization is YouTube,” Colin said. “But YouTube's actually not the standard, it's the exception to how long-form content is monetized. YouTube should be commended for that..but it’s rare."
Mosseri has been clear that monetization is not on the short-term horizon, so the question becomes whether there are other forms of currency Instagram can offer that incentivize creators for their content.
“Attention and discovery are forms of currency,” Samir said. “If you know what to do with that, how to cash in that currency, Instagram is for you.”
We sat down with creators making long-form and short-form content across platforms to get their read on how the update will influence their content, and what new creators should keep in mind as they’re navigating the never-ending landscape of new tech.
For existing short-form creators: The general consensus is Instagram-native, short-form creators stand to gain the most from the update. Unlike TikTok and YouTube, Instagram has yet to pay creators for their content in a meaningful way.
That means existing Instagram creators have had to learn to capitalize on the attention they’re receiving and fund their creativity through other methods.
Braxton Haugen made long-form content on YouTube for seven years without gaining much traction. In under 2 years, he’s amassed over 132K followers on Instagram— making a majority of his revenue through branded videos posted to his Instagram account.
With the new thresholds for YouTube monetization, Haugen’s channel of 15K subscribers does not generate any revenue from the YouTube Partner Program.
He recently asked his Instagram audience if they knew he made long-form videos and over half of responders had no idea.
For creators like Haugen, the Features update means nothing to lose and everything to gain. He can now share a new content medium to an existing audience, without losing any AdSense revenue, because he wasn’t previously making any.
For existing long-form creators: The conversation is more complicated. The YouTube Partner Program is a meaningful revenue source for many creators. If long-form viewership transitions from YouTube to Features, creators who were financially incentivized by views on YouTube may see an impact on overall revenue.
“The new reach is the exciting part,” business creator Vanessa Lau said. “My biggest concern is monetization: if people can watch my long-form on Instagram instead of YouTube, am I cannibalizing my AdSense? If so, that would suck, and I can see it disincentivizing a lot of creators from posting their full long-form there.”
As a Canadian creator, Lau shared creator funds on platforms like TikTok and Instagram are inaccessible for her. That makes YouTube an even bigger part of her creator living and one she and others are likely unwilling to part with.
What creators like Lau stand to gain in terms of reach Instagram, they stand to lose financially on YouTube.
For emerging creators: The sky’s the limit. The promise of Instagram has always been discovery and attention. Where it might take a creator years to get discovered on YouTube, they can get discovered in days on Instagram.
21 days ago, Danielle Croner started a new Instagram account documenting her journey of building a talk show in public. Her first video reached over 86K views and she’s gained nearly 6K followers in just 3 weeks of posting.
Instagram Features accelerates the timeline for aspiring long-form creators who want to get their idea in front of more people, faster.
