With IGTV, Instagram is betting that people want longer vertical videos

Author

Michael Beach
July 02, 2018

Big news: Instagram is launching a standalone video app that will allow creators to distribute long-form videos on the platform.

Video lengths on Instagram:
1) Old limit — 60s (15s for stories)
2) New limit — 60m3) Ideal size — 10m

The target audience includes celebrities/social media stars such as:
1) Kim Kardashian West
2) Selena Gomez
3) Kevin Hart
4) King Bach
5) Ninja

Why are they doing this? YouTube is the preferred video platform for Instagram celebrities due to its monetization options.

Let’s look at a social media star such as Lele Pons for an example.

Social media following:
1) Instagram — 25M followers
2) YouTube — 10M subscribers
3) Facebook — 4M likes

She drives fans directly to her YouTube channel from Instagram/Facebook.

84% of video views on YouTube come from social media stars like Lele Pons.

Watch #2: A walkthrough via TechCrunch.

Why is this a big deal? Two primary reasons.

Reason #1: Instagram’s user base is still growing rapidly.

User growth by year:
1) 2010–1M
2) 2011–10M (↑ 900%)
3) 2012–50M (↑ 400%)
4) 2013–150M (↑ 200%)
5) 2014–300M (↑ 100%)
6) 2015–400M (↑ 33%)
7) 2016–600M (↑ 50%)
8) 2017–800M (↑ 33%)
9) 2018–1B (↑ 25%)

Reason #2: Time spent on Instagram is about to catch Facebook.

Minutes per day:
1) Facebook — 58.5
2) Instagram — 53.2

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