Instagram to soon let content creators monetise IGTV videos with ‘Instagram Partner Program’

Instagram will soon let IGTV content creators monetise their offerings through ads, TechCrunch reported on Friday.

Instagram has confirmed an internally prototyped Instagram Partner Program, which will allow content creators to earn money through advertisements embedded within videos.

The feature was first discovered by app engineer and tipster Jane Manchun Wong, who shared the information on Twitter. Facebook confirmed IGTV Ads for Creators in a statement: “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.” - Facebook Tech Comms Manager @alexvoica,” Wong tweeted.

The details of the programme are not yet known. According to the report, it may work along the lines of its parent company Facebook’s ‘Facebook Watch’ programme, where creators can share videos, and hold a ‘watch party’ with ads appearing within the video. Video creators earn 55 per cent of the total ad revenue.

Creators on IGTV earlier had to turn to either sponsored content or product placement in order to earn from IGTV videos, or drive their followers to their YouTube platform to cash out on YouTube’s partner programme.

The YouTube example

YouTube’s success in the partner programme has sent a benchmark for such video apps.

Vine, a short-form video platform recently rebooted as ‘Byte’, is planning to take on similar platforms such as Instagram and TikTok with its own pilot partner programme.

According to the public release of the programme shared by the company on Twitter, it offers multiple benefits to creators including monetisation via revenue share, enabling direct contact with businesses, experimental features meet and greets, etc. The platform plans to give 100 per cent of the revenue share earned from monetising videos on its platforms to creators as part of their pilot programme, the Verge reported.

Monetisation may also give a much-needed push to IGTV. Instagram in January had decided to get rid of the IGTV button on its homepage, enabling it only on posts, user feed and user profile. Within 18 months of its launch, less than 1 per cent of total Instagram users had downloaded the standalone app for IGTV, TechCrunch had reported.

According to the social media platform’s official website, Instagram currently has over 1 billion monthly active users.

Instagram also launched a new feature earlier today which will display a user's followers in three different categories- “following,” “most seen in-feed” and “least interacted with.” This will allow users to unfollow dormant followers and improve the quality of content on a user’s feed, according to a previous report.