How Facebook-owned Instagram is Monetizing Instagram Reels

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Alan Joseph

Apr 25, 2021 — 5 min read

Facebook Inc is a social media giant which is based in the United States of America. The social media platform is available in around 111 languages and has a presence in almost every country around the globe. It was launched in the year 2004 and has around 2.8 billion monthly active users.

Facebook acquired Instagram in the year 2012. Instagram was founded in the year 2010 as a photo and video sharing platform. As of 2021, Instagram has around 1.074 billion users worldwide. The 71% of the users of Instagram is expected to be below the age of 35.

Instagram had introduced a new feature called Reels videos which is a short video sharing feature in the platform. Reels videos had gained a lot of popularity in India as it was introduced at the right time when the most popular short video platform in the country TikTok was banned by the government.

The growth of the short video feature Reels videos has let Facebook to take the next step in monetizing Instagram Reels. From Ads in Instagram Reels to introduction of new features like Sticker Ads, Let’s look at how Facebook is planning to monetize its Instagram Reels Videos platform.

Facebook to Start Ad testing in Instagram Reels
Instagram Reels - Ads and Categories
Facebook Plans to test other Features

Facebook to Start Ad testing in Instagram Reels

On 22 April 2021, Facebook Inc had announced that it is planning to start testing the ads in its Instagram platform in the reels section. In the first stage, Facebook said it will concentrate on the countries such as Australia, Germany, Brazil and India.

It will be a step taken by Facebook to generate revenue from its short video platform. India is considered to be one of their fast-growing social media platforms and this is a step taken by Facebook to try to capitalize on its popularity in India.

Carolyn Everson, the Vice President of Facebook’s global business group said in an interview that the introduction of ads is an indication of how strong momentum Facebook has for its Reels platform in the country. However, Carolyn Everson did not share any usage metrics of the Reels.

Instagram Reels - Ads and Categories

Facebook had said that compared to other contents, The Ads on Reels are planned to be as long as up to 30 seconds and the users will have an additional feature that will let them skip the Ads according to their choice.

On 22 April 2021, Facebook had also announced that it will let the advertisers to select video content based on certain categories on which they would want to place their ads on. Some of the categories would include fitness and health, videos for children, animals and pets, workouts, etc.

Carolyn Everson says that this step from Facebook is a big deal for the marketers.

Facebook Plans to test other Features

In India, Facebook has plans to test various other features and one among them would be to provide a feature for the content creators to share their Reels videos on their Facebook accounts as well.

Facebook also has plans to introduce a new feature and begin the testing of it. The new feature of Facebook is Sticker Ads for the stories posted on Facebook. The social media giant has plans to introduce and test this feature in the coming weeks.

Sticker Ads will let the brands to create a sticker that will be based on their product or anything related to the brand. The influencers or social media promoters will be able to place those stickers on their story. Any sales which are made through these sticker Ads placed by the influencers can be claimed by them to get a percentage of the sales.

This new feature will be a strategy by Facebook to provide a platform for the influencers and social media content creators to earn money directly from their fans and followers. It is similar to the way the influencers and social media creators are making money through the platforms such as Clubhouse which is an audio chat app and Patreon which is a membership site.

Advertisers commonly use Facebook to help them target their market based on their interests. The platform helps them find their target market. This new feature will be a great effort from Facebook’s side to let the brands advertise their contents along with creating them. This will be considered as one of the biggest moves by the social media giant.

Conclusion

We will be able to see a lot more newer features that will be introduced by Facebook in a short period of time. This is one of the first steps taken by Facebook to help and improve the brands and the influencers in their platform.