Despite its short history, it is clear that Instagram has been making efforts to attract content creators and viewers around the world to rely on IGTV as a sole platform. Kenyan content on the platform has also been growing for some time now but the fact that people can’t earn from it has been a huge deal-breaker for most.
Well, the Facebook-owned photo-sharing platform will start sharing revenue with creators through ads on IGTV and badges that viewers can purchase on Instagram Live. The incoming ads have been hinted by the company for about a year now, often saying the long-form video offering would be the most likely place it would first pay creators.
This will start from next week where ads will start popping up on IGTV. However, this will begin with only around 200 approved international creators, including Lele Pons and Adama Waheed. The ads will come from a handful of major partners like Ikea, Puma and Sephora.
According to Instagram’s COO, Justin Osofsky, the share will be an “industry standard” 55% cut with creators. The main goal, of course, is to have the group expand and include many more creators from around the world, possibly even Kenya.
These ads will only appear when people click to watch IGTV videos from previews in their feed. Like the videos, the initial bunch of ads will be vertical videos up to 15 seconds long. A number of tools will be tested throughout the year such as being able to skip ads.
Nevertheless, creators will have to adhere to an Instagram monetisation policy that is quite different from those of other platforms.
If a creator wishes for their content to be monetised, for instance, they will have to make sure there is no swearing as brands’ ads never show up in front of inappropriate content.
As much as regular users hate ads, these ads are set to help content creators on the platform earn as they should and maybe even attract more people to jump in. It will be interesting to see how many more brands seek to advertise on the vertical video site and spend just as much as they do on YouTube.
For any of that to ever happen, IGTV will have to work on getting high view counts and make sure that users watch and interact with the ads. After all, it’s all bout the clicks.
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