With rising competition, Facebook and the services it owns including Instagram are trying their best to remain ahead of the competition. Now, long-form video is something Instagram is focusing on heavily, after introducing it a year prior.
The reason why top Publishers are hesitating in making IGTV as their go-to is the lack of monetization there, unlike Facebook Watch, YouTube and Snapchat Discover. However, Instagram recently introduced a new branded content tool to IGTV to attract businesses and creators, with no signs of formal ad units whatsoever.
Not only monetization, but lack of familiarity with IGTV has also contributed negatively.
BuzzFeed has a reputation of investing in different social media platforms. However, its editorial director Maycie Timpone explained that it is hard to invest in IGTV since there is no mid-roll or pre-roll ad options, so they are just putting up recycled content to test waters.
Although IGTV has around 1.75 million Monthly Active Users (courtesy of Apptopia), the number is nothing in front of Instagram’s 1 billion plus Monthly Active users. It should be noted that IGTV facilities can be availed through Instagram as well (eliminating the need of downloading the standalone app).
Regardless, Instagram has continued to improve IGTV by allowing the content to be previewed in Instagram’s main feed, in addition to supporting horizontal videos.
Meredith has continued to show support towards IGTV by launching 20 IGTV shows, including Real Simple, in the past several months, catered to 13 brands. The collective views garnered by Meredith’s videos are 40 million, averaging at 200,000 views per episode.
Many Publishers are also experimenting on longer content oriented towards younger demographic of Instagram, through IGTV. CNN is one of those publishers, having a number of stories specifically for IGTV.
ESPN is also among the publishers having trust in IGTV as a platform to grow its audience. On the main Instagram platform, ESPN usually posts graphics, images and character-driven stories. On IGTV however, the target is to include videos found on the main ESPN account as well as on the SportsCenter one.
Additionally, Jellysmack is also rehashing content it posted on other platforms to upload on IGTV. Some of the videos it has posted on IGTV have garnered over 5 million views. Not to forget that Gamology (another account owned by Jellysmack) has 24 IGTV videos with a million or more views. Michael Philippe, the CEO of Jellysmack, explained that IGTV, like Snap, is conditioned more for premium content, as opposed to viral content.
Publishers demand more insight into the analytics and monetization from the app, in order to keep on posting on the app. Facebook, during the recent Creator Day, assured that it would be incorporating Instagram insights, content management and publishing tools for both IGTV and Instagram feed into Facebook’s Creator Studio. Still, the demand of Publishers regarding the audience demographic information will remain unanswered for now.
Photo: Digital Information World
Read next: Facebook and Instagram have been Suffering Unusual Outages this Year and it's Quite Concerning!
The reason why top Publishers are hesitating in making IGTV as their go-to is the lack of monetization there, unlike Facebook Watch, YouTube and Snapchat Discover. However, Instagram recently introduced a new branded content tool to IGTV to attract businesses and creators, with no signs of formal ad units whatsoever.
Not only monetization, but lack of familiarity with IGTV has also contributed negatively.
BuzzFeed has a reputation of investing in different social media platforms. However, its editorial director Maycie Timpone explained that it is hard to invest in IGTV since there is no mid-roll or pre-roll ad options, so they are just putting up recycled content to test waters.
Although IGTV has around 1.75 million Monthly Active Users (courtesy of Apptopia), the number is nothing in front of Instagram’s 1 billion plus Monthly Active users. It should be noted that IGTV facilities can be availed through Instagram as well (eliminating the need of downloading the standalone app).
Regardless, Instagram has continued to improve IGTV by allowing the content to be previewed in Instagram’s main feed, in addition to supporting horizontal videos.
Meredith has continued to show support towards IGTV by launching 20 IGTV shows, including Real Simple, in the past several months, catered to 13 brands. The collective views garnered by Meredith’s videos are 40 million, averaging at 200,000 views per episode.
Many Publishers are also experimenting on longer content oriented towards younger demographic of Instagram, through IGTV. CNN is one of those publishers, having a number of stories specifically for IGTV.
ESPN is also among the publishers having trust in IGTV as a platform to grow its audience. On the main Instagram platform, ESPN usually posts graphics, images and character-driven stories. On IGTV however, the target is to include videos found on the main ESPN account as well as on the SportsCenter one.
Additionally, Jellysmack is also rehashing content it posted on other platforms to upload on IGTV. Some of the videos it has posted on IGTV have garnered over 5 million views. Not to forget that Gamology (another account owned by Jellysmack) has 24 IGTV videos with a million or more views. Michael Philippe, the CEO of Jellysmack, explained that IGTV, like Snap, is conditioned more for premium content, as opposed to viral content.
Publishers demand more insight into the analytics and monetization from the app, in order to keep on posting on the app. Facebook, during the recent Creator Day, assured that it would be incorporating Instagram insights, content management and publishing tools for both IGTV and Instagram feed into Facebook’s Creator Studio. Still, the demand of Publishers regarding the audience demographic information will remain unanswered for now.
Photo: Digital Information World
Read next: Facebook and Instagram have been Suffering Unusual Outages this Year and it's Quite Concerning!
