Instagram is testing features aimed at capturing more of the entertainment landscape, including the ability to play long-form videos like podcasts and more on the platform.
Starting Monday, Instagram will launch a test of horizontal videos up to 90 minutes long with selected creators in the United States. The product, called Features, is aimed at podcasters, comedians and other long-form creators, with the ability to send viewers to the full video from the platform’s short reels, which are typically around three minutes or less.
“What you’re now going to be able to do is see a clip of a podcast that you like, you can just click and continue watching or watch the full video, and you’ll be able to dive in and see the whole thing because creators will be able to tie those Reels into their overall functionality,” said Tessa Lyons, VP of product at Instagram.
Instagram has already tested this feature with creators in Brazil and plans to expand it to tens of thousands of creators in the United States. Videos will also be recommended to users on Instagram’s Explore page and other areas. Early creators involved in the test include podcast host and Skims co-founder Emma Grede; beauty and fashion designer Monet McMichael; Preston Rakovsky, who interviews New Yorkers about love and relationships; and football content creator Donald De La Haye.
It comes as Netflix, Disney and others have added podcasts and creator videos to their platforms, aiming to capture more consumer viewing hours and compete with entertainment giant YouTube. One of the challenges for Instagram and others in the battle against YouTube has been competing with the platform’s lucrative revenue-sharing deals, with YouTube offering qualified creators 55% of ad revenue and helping drive brand deals.
Lyons said Instagram is currently working on “a few different deals” with early feature creators, but there are currently no exclusivities around uploading videos to Instagram (unlike Netflix’s deals for podcasts). Additionally, existing ad deals will be reflected in videos, but Instagram will also work with creators without existing placements to find deals.
“For established creators who already have those relationships, they can bring that content in with those placements and that branded content. And we also think there’s a big opportunity for us to help creators who don’t yet have that infrastructure and activity behind them,” Lyons said.
The features will be available on mobile, but the goal is to bring the viewing experience to Instagram for TV, which launched last year with Samsung, Fire TV, Google TV and is now expanding to Apple TV in the US as part of Instagram’s transition into a larger share of the entertainment landscape.
“We think the best viewing experience for long-form horizontal content is on a large horizontal screen, and so I think that’s where we expect a lot of the deep consumption to happen over time,” Lyons said.
Additionally, given the rise of microdramas and creators’ desire for episodic videos, Instagram has experimented with Series, which hosts episodic Reels on a creator’s profile. In June, the company began contacting microdrama studios in Southeast Asia to experiment with this feature film and has since reached out to individual creators, who have been experimenting with their own episodic content.
In the coming months, Instagram plans to begin testing this feature in more countries and bring it to the United States by the end of this year or early next year. The company has also begun testing how it will appear on television.
These join other new features being tested by Instagram, including integrating live video into the Reels tab and broadcasting live video to an audience that doesn’t follow users. This project is launched in Indonesia and Brazil, and there are plans to expand to the United States next year.
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