Strategy · · 4 min read
Instagram goeslong-form.
Instagram is testing 90-minute videos, a TV app and clips that link back to the full film. What's changing, what isn't, and what to do about it.
Co-founder · Managing Director
On 26 October Instagram announced it's testing videos of up to 90 minutes. After years of insisting it was a short-form app, Meta is building a home for long-form on the platform where most brands already have their audience. Here's what's actually changing, and what it means if you make content for a living.
What Instagram announced
- A new upload type, currently called Features, for videos up to 90 minutes long.
- It's a test for now: rolling out in Brazil, with a small test starting in the US. No UK date yet.
- Long videos will live in the mobile app and on Instagram's new TV app, which Adam Mosseri admitted will "take some time to get right".
- Clips as Reels: creators can cut a clip from a long video and post it as a Reel that links back to the full thing.
- Better discovery for Live, and a hub on creator profiles for episodic Reels, not unlike TikTok's playlists.
The most telling line came from Mosseri himself: "For a long time, I have been against doing long-form video on Instagram." Reels, he argued, drives more shares and DMs. What's changed is the ambition to make short-form and long-form "symbiotic": the Reel finds you, the long video keeps you.
"For a long time, I have been against doing long-form video on Instagram." — Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram
The catch: there's no money in it yet
YouTube pays creators 55% of the ad revenue on their videos, and says it has paid out more than $100 billion over the last four years. Instagram pays almost nothing per view. Its small performance-based programme, in Mosseri's words, costs Meta "more money than we make back by a long shot", and a Meta spokesperson said it's "too early to share a long-term monetization model" for Features.
So if you're a creator wondering whether to move your long-form to Instagram: not yet. Post it there as well, by all means, but YouTube is still the only place long-form video pays for itself directly.
What it means for brands
For a business, the maths is different. You're not chasing ad revenue; you're chasing attention and trust, and long-form is where trust gets built. We've seen it for ourselves. A fifteen-minute episode does something a fifteen-second Reel can't: it lets someone get to know you before they ever pick up the phone. Until now that's meant sending your Instagram audience off to YouTube and hoping they followed. If Features lands properly, the whole journey happens in one app.
Three things we'd do now:
- Keep making long-form. Podcasts, day-in-the-life episodes, proper reviews. Every platform is now building for it, and the brands with a back catalogue will be the ones that benefit first.
- Shoot for both. The "Clips as Reels" idea is exactly how we already plan a shoot day: the hero piece first, then the hooks and vertical moments that point back to it. Instagram is about to make that link native.
- Don't abandon YouTube. It's where long-form gets searched for, where it earns, and where it keeps working years later. Instagram long-form will be an extra door, not a replacement.
Our take
Instagram has tried this before. IGTV launched with a lot of noise in 2018 and was quietly folded away. The difference this time is that the audience has changed: people now watch long videos on their phones every day, and they watch them on TVs too. Whether Instagram can hold that attention is the open question. Whether you should be ready for it isn't.
If you want help building a long-form strategy that works across YouTube and Instagram, get in touch.