With Facebook expanding its Reels feature to mobile across all other countries, Instagram is also making big changes to its video features and has announced that it will no longer be supporting its standalone app for IGTV. This is to fully integrate all videos onto the main Instagram app and promote Reels, which is currently its fastest-growing content format.
Short for “Instagram TV,” IGTV was the social media app’s platform for long-form vertical videos and was created to contend with apps like YouTube and Snapchat. Despite the company’s best efforts, however, it never became popular with Insta users. Meanwhile, Reels has become popular enough to compete with TikTok.
Come mid-March 2022, IGTV’s standalone app will be completely shut down and removed from the app stores. Additionally, In-Stream video ads or IGTV ads will no longer be supported. The creators on IGTV who are actively using this monetization will receive a temporary monthly payment based on their recent earnings.
If they want to continue, however, they’ll have to transfer to the Instagram app and use Reels from now on. The monetization options for this feature are being expanded upon, as well—with tests being conducted on overlay ads and user-sent tips in the form of “Stars.” Plans for upcoming features also include sharing and cross-posting to Facebook.
IGTV’s functionality has pretty much been merged with Feed Video and Reels and rebranded to “Instagram Video”—which is an easily-accessible section on the Instagram app interface. While the lack of lower daily time limits means that you might spend more time watching Reels, the chance to support your fave creators and even become one yourself is still a pretty solid deal.
