Instagram Pays Creators Up to $500,000 for Long-Form Features – 90-Minute Videos, TV App, No Ad Share Yet

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by Nino LeitnerToday

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Instagram is back in long-form video, and this time it brings a checkbook. The new Features format lets selected creators upload horizontal videos of up to 90 minutes, and according to an exclusive Business Insider report, Meta pays some creators between $50,000 and $500,000 to post them. What Instagram still does not offer is what keeps creators on YouTube: a share of the ad revenue.

Instagram announced Features on Monday, October 26, 2026, in a long-form video by Tessa Lyons, Vice President of Product at Instagram, and in an interview that Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri gave to The Colin and Samir Show. Features are horizontal videos of up to 90 minutes, as long as a feature film, aimed at podcasts, vlogs, interviews and similar formats. They appear in the main feed and on the Explore page. According to TheWrap, the test started with creators in Brazil and rolls out to select creators in the US this month. Three days later, on October 29, Business Insider reported how Meta gets the first wave of content onto the platform: it pays for it.

I have to admit that I find this story more interesting than the format itself. A 90-minute upload limit is a spec. A $500,000 offer to a YouTuber is a strategy. Let’s take a closer look at both.

What Instagram has announced

Features are the core of the announcement. Creators in the test group can upload horizontal videos of up to 90 minutes, which is a clear break from the vertical, short-form logic that has defined Instagram since Reels took over. In his interview, Mosseri explained the change of direction with a simple statement: “We want to be the most culturally relevant platform, and to do that, we need to show up where people are.”

Three related tools come with the format:

• Linked Reels: select creators can post Reels to their feed that link to a full Feature, so a short clip works as the entry point to the long video. In the Brazil test, up to eight clips can point to one long-form video.
• Series: a dedicated place on a creator’s profile for episodic Reels. Series has been in testing for select creators in the US, India and Mexico since spring, and Instagram plans to expand it to more countries through the end of the year.
• TV features: users can save Features and Series on their phone to watch later on TV, and Instagram is testing a “second screen” option that uses the phone as a remote.

The idea behind linked Reels is easy to read. Today, many viewers see a clip from a YouTube video as a Reel and then leave Instagram to watch the full video on YouTube. With Features, Instagram wants to keep both the short clip and the full video inside its own app.

$50,000 to $500,000 per creator

According to Business Insider, which spoke with people familiar with the deals, not every offer is equal. Meta has offered some creators $50,000 to post long-form video to Features, while others received six-figure offers, some of them as high as $500,000. Meta confirmed the program in general terms. “We’ve been public about the fact that we are funding Features content directly with some creators right now to support them,” a Meta spokesperson told the publication. “The details of those deals are confidential, but we’re excited to see the content going live.”

The most telling detail is what the deals do not require. Several people familiar with the agreements told Business Insider that there is no exclusivity to Instagram. One person said that Instagram asks creators to post any long-form video they publish on YouTube to Instagram on the same day. In other words, Instagram does not ask creators to leave YouTube. It asks them to bring their YouTube library along, in parallel (and I suspect a lot of YouTube executives read that sentence twice).

Reza Izad, co-CEO of the talent agency Underscore Talent, called the deals an “exciting opportunity” for creators. “Every time there’s a new feature in these apps that the company’s promoting, people will have more opportunity to be seen because there’s going to be algorithmic preference to this kind of content,” he told Business Insider. “And unlike short-form, there’s not a lot of abundance.”

He has a point. Early in a new format, there is little competition for the slot in the feed, and the platform has every reason to push it. My feeling is that this window will not stay open for long, but for the first creators, the reach could be considerable. That is a guess, though, because Instagram has not published anything about how Features are ranked.

We have seen this before: IGTV

Business Insider describes Features as the return of IGTV, and the comparison fits. Instagram launched IGTV in June 2018 with uploads of up to one hour, a standalone app and a vertical-video focus. In 2020, it added ads to IGTV and gave creators 55% of the ad revenue, the same split that YouTube uses for long-form video. In 2021, Instagram also funded long-form episodic shows from creators such as the “Sway Boys” and Nia Sioux. None of it gained traction. Instagram merged IGTV into a general “Instagram Video” tab in 2021 and closed the standalone app in 2022, as Reels became the company’s priority.

Paid deals are not new either. Last year, Meta paid creators thousands of dollars to post short-form videos to Instagram and Facebook, at a time when TikTok faced a possible ban in the US under a law that required its Chinese owner to sell the app’s US business. Instagram has also tested several bonus programs that paid creators for the performance of their Reels, but according to Business Insider, those programs have dwindled.

Mosseri himself has argued against long-form video on Instagram for years. In 2024, he said the platform would stay focused on short-form content, and in another interview that year he called Instagram’s earlier Reels bonus payments “burning money.” In the new interview, he admits that he opposed long-form video for a long time and now wants Instagram to lean into it. What is different this time: the format is horizontal, it is connected to a TV app, and it arrives after YouTube has proved that creator video works on the living room screen.

The TV app is the real target

The long-form push is directly connected to the living room. Instagram first launched its TV app on Amazon Fire TV in the US in December 2025, then brought it to Samsung smart TVs and Google TV. Apple TV support is next; TheWrap reports a launch this month. The TV app now gives priority to Features, which makes sense: a 90-minute horizontal video is a TV product, not a phone product.

This is exactly where YouTube is strongest. As we reported in March, YouTube is now the world’s largest media company, and it has been the number one streaming service by watch time on US TVs for years. Instagram enters this space with a huge audience, but without a library of long-form content and without a long-form habit among its viewers. Seen from that angle, the checks are a way to buy a library quickly.

What about everyone else?

This is the big question that Business Insider also raises. A handful of creators get direct deals, but the rest of the creator community gets no platform income from Features at this time. According to Variety, Instagram does not plan an ad revenue sharing program like YouTube’s for these videos. An Instagram spokesperson said it is too early to share a long-term monetization model, and that the company is exploring brand, fan and performance-based incentives.

Creators raised the topic immediately after the announcement, and Mosseri answered in a post on X on Wednesday, October 28: “We understand the economics matter a ton, and are exploring multiple options to help long-form creators get paid.” That is a softer tone than in his interview, where he said that Instagram has no plans yet for a revenue share across short-form and long-form video. It is not a commitment, though.

What remains on Instagram today are its existing tools: brand partnerships, subscriptions, gifts from viewers, and invitation-only bonus programs. None of these pays a creator a fixed share of the ads that run next to their video. For a creator who uploads a 40-minute camera review or a behind-the-scenes documentary without a Meta deal, the direct platform income from that video is zero.

What YouTube pays in comparison

YouTube’s model is the benchmark. In the YouTube Partner Program, creators keep 55% of the ad revenue from their long-form videos, and YouTube says it has paid more than $100 billion to creators, artists and media companies in four years.

The bar to join is getting higher, though. As we explained in August, YouTube is changing its Partner Program rules from February 1, 2027. New channels then need 1,000 subscribers plus either 8,000 qualified watch hours in the last 365 days or 20 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days, double the current requirement. Channels already in the program keep their status. YouTube also changed how it counts views in August.

So the trade-off is clear. YouTube makes it harder to enter its revenue program but pays a fixed share once you are in. Instagram is free to join and pays a few selected creators very well, but it pays everyone else no ad share on long-form video at all.

Could this start a bidding war for creators?

I think this is the most interesting long-term question. If Meta opens Features to all creators and adds an ad revenue share, YouTube would face real competition for long-form creators for the first time in years. Two platforms that compete for the same videos could push each other toward better terms, for example a higher ad share, lower entry thresholds, or more direct deals. Creators would be the winners of such a contest. To be clear, this is my speculation; neither company has announced anything in this direction.

History shows that YouTube does react. When IGTV launched in 2018, Business Insider reported that YouTube paid some top creators five- and six-figure sums so that they would not put new content on IGTV first. This time, the roles are reversed, with Meta writing the checks.

There is also a strong argument against a quick bidding war. In his interview with The Colin and Samir Show, Mosseri described Instagram’s performance-based payments to video creators as “ROI negative,” meaning they cost Meta more than they bring in, and said that long-form video needs a monetization model that does not lose money. A revenue share above YouTube’s 55% does not fit that statement. My guess is that Meta will first try to compete with reach, the TV app and selected deals, and only open a general revenue share if Features proves that it can bring in advertisers. I would be happy to be wrong about that.

Is Instagram a YouTube alternative for filmmakers?

As a replacement for YouTube income, no, not at this time. At CineD, we publish our long-form video on YouTube, and I don’t see a reason to move it while Instagram has no revenue model for the format. A channel that earns from long-form ads would simply lose that income.

As an addition, the picture is different, and this is precisely how Meta structures its deals: same-day uploads next to YouTube, not instead of it. Many creators already use Reels to promote their YouTube videos. With Features, that same short clip can lead to a full video that stays on Instagram. That is useful for creators whose income comes mostly from brand deals rather than platform ads, and for channels that are still below YouTube’s new 2027 thresholds and want to build an audience in parallel.

Several questions remain open:

• When will Features be available to all creators, and in which countries?
• Will Instagram add ads to Features, and if so, will creators get a share?
• What upload specifications apply (resolution, frame rates, HDR, bit rate), and how does Instagram compress long-form uploads for TV playback?
• Does Instagram give creators separate analytics for viewing on the TV app?

Instagram has not answered these questions yet. My guess is that the paid deals are a test as much as the format is: if the funded creators bring an audience, a broader monetization model becomes much easier to justify internally. If they don’t, Features could follow IGTV. But that is only my guess.

Availability

Features are in testing now with select creators in Brazil and the US. There is no public sign-up, no announced date for a general rollout, and no general monetization program for the format; only the creators with direct Meta deals get paid for now. The Instagram TV app is available on Amazon Fire TV, Samsung smart TVs and Google TV in the US, with Apple TV support next.

Would you post your long-form videos to Instagram on the same day as YouTube, with or without a check from Meta? Or does YouTube stay your only home for long-form? Let me know what you think in the comments below!