18 Feb What Comes First – The Influencer or the Ads?

If you’ve been paying attention to Instagram for the past 18 months or so, you know all about IGTV – Instagram’s long-form video service.  The response to IGTV has been up and down for the platform, but it has been consistent in that it has allowed publishers to get longer videos up on Insta.

Even as things like allowing users to post longer videos in the feed have increased organic reach, some of the bigger social influencers have been hesitant to go all in on IGTV.

Now, Instagram is about to do the one thing that’s almost guaranteed to bring more influencer-based content to IGTV – they’re going to pay.

Big Money for Long Videos

As the Wall Street Journal notes, Instagram is in discussions for six – seven figure deals with some brands to create and publish content for IGTV.

The CEO of Instagram took to Twitter (how meta can we get here?) to confirm this, saying “IGTV is still in its early days, but it’s growing and so we’re exploring more ways to make it sustainable for creators.”

Bottom line – more advertising is coming to Instagram, specifically in the form of sponsorship and partnerships on IGTV.

More Ads, More Videos

So what does this all mean for you?  Unless you’re an influencer with millions of followers, you’re not likely to be cashing a giant check from Instagram any time soon.  But if you are, please feel free to share with us

For everyone else, it’s a signal that Instagram is still serious about IGTV as a part of their platform moving forward.  And this is no small detail.  New features come and go, and it’s important for marketers to be cautious about where they spend their time.

In this case, it’s looking more and more like IGTV is here to stay.  So get to the gym and work on those vlogging muscles – you’ve got a lot of content to record!