Article · Marketing that works
Instagram's 90-minute videos are about ad space, not creators
Instagram is testing 90-minute videos called Features. It's pitched at creators, but the real reason is room for ads that short Reels can't hold.
Instagram has started testing a new kind of upload called Features, which lets creators post videos up to 90 minutes long. It comes with a companion tool, Clips as Reels, that cuts a long video into short Reels pointing back to the full thing. The test started in Brazil and is now running with a small group in the US. TechCrunch has the details.
The pitch is about creators. Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram, admitted that creators there mostly get paid by brands, not by the platform, and that its own payment scheme loses money: “we spend more money than we make back by a long shot.” YouTube, by contrast, gives creators in its partner programme 55% of the ad revenue from their videos.
What is Instagram actually after?
I think this is about ad revenue. It’s very hard to put a 15 or 30 second ad inside a 60 second Reel without people swiping away, which is why short video has always been awkward to sell ads against. A 90 minute video has natural breaks, and those breaks are ad space. Meta has already hinted that ads and new ways to earn money may follow.
That’s a direct move on YouTube, which has owned long-form video and the ad money that comes with it. Anyone watching ad platforms should read it that way, whatever the announcement says about helping creators.
Didn’t Instagram try this before?
It did. IGTV launched in 2018 for longer videos, never caught on, and was shut down in 2022. When Instagram closed it, it also dropped the in-stream ads that ran on those videos so it could focus on Reels. So the question isn’t whether Instagram wants long video. It’s what it has learned from the last attempt. Clips as Reels looks like the answer: rather than asking people to go somewhere new, it uses short clips to send them to the long version.
I’m curious to see whether that’s enough, and whether TikTok reacts. TikTok has been testing uploads of up to an hour since 2024, but it hasn’t made long video a real push. If Instagram starts paying out on long-form, TikTok will probably have to.
What does it mean for brands?
For fashion and sport brands this is worth watching rather than acting on yet. If Instagram puts ads into long videos, there’s a new kind of ad placement to buy: one in front of people who have chosen to watch for 20 minutes, not three seconds. It also gives brands somewhere other than YouTube for the longer content they already make, like race films, behind-the-scenes work and product stories.
The cost is on the creator side. If Instagram starts paying creators properly, the people brands rely on for partnerships have another income, and their fees will reflect it. The same happened when ChatGPT opened up ads: a new place to buy attention changes the price of the old ones.
If you plan creator budgets for next year on this year’s rates, you may find the creators you want have a better offer.