Instagram isn’t just chasing YouTube‘s TV watch time and ad revenue–it’s chasing its talent, too. The Meta-owned platform has offered to pay some YouTubers up to $500,000 to post videos with its newly announced long-form horizontal format “Features.”
According to Business Insider, Instagram has approached “select” YouTubers with a floor price of $50,000; others have gotten six-figure offers, and things top out at a half-million dollars.
“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 BI. “The details of those deals are confidential, but we’re excited to see the content going live.”
It’s not clear how Instagram is paying out these amounts–per video, per month, or as one-time flat compensation. We’d bet the latter, and perhaps the pot’s sweetened with a promise to pay creators performance bonuses or an ad rev share if their Features content does well (especially on TVs, where pricier ads slots can pull in serious cash for platforms).
Meta already said, though, that it’s “too early to share a long-term monetization model [for Features], but we’re exploring ways for creators to earn from brands, fans, and Instagram, including performance-based incentives.”
Introducing Features earlier this week, Instagram hyped its established TV viewership, with VP of Product Tessa Lyons saying “people love to watch Reels together in their living rooms with their friends, so we’ve been working on a TV version of Reels.”
“[W]e know to do that well, we need more than just short-form video,” she added.
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