Instagram opens for 90-minute videos and Episode TV section
Mosseri reverses years of short-form doctrine to chase YouTube's ad split, monetization deficit drives third straight format copy after Stories and Reels
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Image Credits:Instagram
Image Credits:Instagram
Amanda Silberling
techcrunch.com
Instagram is testing uploads of videos up to 90 minutes long, the platform announced on Monday, alongside a push its VP of Product Tessa Lyons calls a shift toward an "Episode TV" section of culturally relevant long-form content. The move reverses years of strategy under Instagram head Adam Mosseri, who previously argued against long-form video on the platform, noting that shorter content like Reels drives more shares and DMs.
The reversal is about money, and Instagram does not currently have any. Mosseri explained on the Colin and Samir Show that creators on Instagram are today paid primarily by brands, with a small performance-based program that Instagram spends more on than it earns back — which, he conceded, makes scaling difficult. YouTube, by contrast, pays creators enrolled in its Partner Program 55 percent of the ad revenue generated on their videos, and reports having paid out more than 100 billion dollars to creators, artists and media companies over the previous four years. Neither Instagram nor TikTok has managed to replicate that model with short-form content, because ads attached to 30-second clips cannot sustain a revenue split that funds a creative class.
So Instagram is now selling the one format it spent a decade telling creators was unwelcome. A Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch the company is exploring ways for creators to earn from brands, fans and Instagram itself, including performance-based incentives — a polite description of building YouTube's business model eight years after YouTube built it. To bridge the formats, Instagram is testing a feature called "Clips as Reels," letting creators cut promotional Reels from their long videos and link viewers to the full-length upload. The company is also explicitly encouraging creators to upload longer videos, a pitch its own leadership once rejected.
The timing reads less like product design than like a financing narrative. Meta is raising up to 95 billion dollars for its compute buildout, and engagement metrics that justify that capital raise must keep climbing. Every format Instagram copies — Stories from Snapchat, Reels from TikTok, now long-form video from YouTube — becomes another inventory slot in the ad engine. The platforms have largely stopped competing on products; they are converging on the same ad-supported viewport, one acquisition of someone else's idea at a time. Reels will remain, Lyons insists, a core part of Instagram.
The question the pitch leaves open is whether the sofa audience follows the spreadsheet. IGTV, Instagram's earlier attempt at long-form, was shut down and never spoken of again — and it did not have a 95-billion-dollar bond issue to answer to.