A year and a half after rolling out its long-form video hub, IGTV, Instagram is finally working on a way for creators to monetize their content on the platform. After the impending changes were originally reported by software reverse engineer, Jane Manchun Wong, Facebook has confirmed to TechCrunch that it is testing a ‘Partner Program’ that will allow eligible influencers on the platform to earn money by ‘running short ads’ on their IGTV videos.
Facebook’s EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) Communications Manager, Alexandru Voica, also confirmed the development via Twitter, but refused to divulge any further details. “We continue to explore ways to help creators monetize with IGTV. We don’t have more details to share now, but we will as they develop further”, he said.
While details about the impending changes remain under the wraps for now, it will likely similar to the monetization options from other video-based platforms such as YouTube, which has its own Partner Program that requires publishers to have more than 4,000 valid public watch hours in the last 12 months as well as at least a thousand subscribers, to be able to monetize their content.
As for Instagram’s parent company, Facebook, pages registered as business accounts on the platform must have at least 10,000 followers and 30,000 video views for at least 1-minute over a 60-day period to able to make money on the website. Instagram itself runs ads inside users’ feeds and Stories, but this is the first time that IGTV influencers will get a chance to get their share of the $20 billion ad revenue that the platform earned last year.
The lack of monetization options on IGTV is believed to be the primary reason for the lack of compelling content on the platform, so it will be interesting to see if the new feature will finally cure that problem and make it a true competitor to apps like TikTok, which continues to grow exponentially, even in the face of several controversies around the world.
