Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri recently stated that the firm was “no longer a photo-sharing app” and that the company was emphasizing a video shift in the face of stiff competition from TikTok and YouTube. With the announcement that it will now integrate IGTV’s long-form video and Instagram Feed videos into a new format called “Instagram Video,” Instagram is taking another step toward its broader objective of making video a more fundamental element of the Instagram experience.
Both longer and shorter videos will be accessed on a new “Video” tab on users’ profiles.
In the meantime, when people come across videos on Instagram, they’ll be able to press anywhere on the video to go into fullscreen mode. They can either keep scrolling to discover more video content from creators or touch the back button to depart after watching.
None of these adjustments, however, will have an influence on what Instagram is doing with Reels. According to our sources, the company’s short-form video platform and TikTok competitor will remain independent. If users opt to scroll, they will not be merged into this video feed.
Before this shift, IGTV was already losing ground as a single product and brand. Due to a lack of interest, Instagram removed the orange IGTV button from its home page in early 2020. According to Sensor Tower analysis, just about 7 million of Instagram’s 1 billion-plus users had downloaded the standalone IGTV app at the time of the announcement. The company believes that the app had 18 million installs worldwide as of August 31, 2021, across the App Store and Google Play.
Instagram justified its decision to remove the button by claiming that the majority of Instagram users discovered IGTV content through previews shared in the Feed and Explore. However, critics and creators stated that IGTV as a standalone product was mostly causing clutter and confusion in the flagship app, while failing to drive a big number of downloads to the standalone IGTV app.
The IGTV app, on the other hand, isn’t going away anytime soon. Instagram has announced that it would be renamed “Instagram Video” and will include “Instagram Video” structured material as well as Instagram Live videos. It will not, however, host Reels videos.
Users can continue to upload non-Reels videos in the same way they did before, by clicking the plus sign (+) in the top-right corner of the Instagram home page and selecting “Post.” The length of a video can be up to 60 minutes.
As part of the revamped upload experience, Instagram is also adding new tools like editing, filters, and people and location tagging.
Longer videos, which were previously designated as IGTV videos, will appear in the Feed with 60-second teasers, just as they did before. If the video is ad-eligible, the preview will be 15 seconds long, same like before.
With today’s adjustments, “IGTV Ads” will no longer be named such. They’ll be referred to as “In-Stream video advertising” instead. Long-form videos can continue to be monetized by creators, and brands can exploit the format as well. And, as before, the films will be included in Instagram’s revenue-sharing tests with creators. (However, if businesses want their videos to reach more people, they must be under 60 seconds long.)
According to Instagram, creators will be able to cross-post their videos to Stories and share them via Direct Messages.
With these modifications, Instagram hopes to provide a more simplified video experience. The app will still identify videos by length if Reels are kept distinct. However, this is comparable to how YouTube is dealing with the challenge posed by TikTok. YouTube Shorts, a TikTok competitor, has its own dedicated button in the YouTube app, similar to Instagram Reels.
The modifications will be sent out internationally starting today on both iOS and Android, according to Instagram.