Instagram, the platform that spent the better part of a decade teaching the world to consume content in fifteen-second bursts, would now like a word with your television.
Tessa Lyons, Instagram's vice president of product, told attendees at the Scalable Summit that short-form vertical content alone is unlikely to succeed on connected TV, and that Instagram is actively rethinking its approach to better serve creators who operate across both formats. Her vision for two years from now is an Instagram that sits comfortably within creators' long-form strategies.
In 2018, Instagram launched IGTV as a separate app that supported long-form vertical video, with considerable fanfare and the explicit ambition of becoming a YouTube rival. By 2022, it quietly got folded away under the broader banner of simplifying the Instagram experience.
The difference this time is that the landscape around Instagram has shifted considerably. YouTube is currently the most-watched streaming video service, and that dominance is built substantially on CTV, where YouTube on the big screen is watched in the evening for long stretches, much like cable once was. This pushed Instagram to launch an updated CTV app back in December, and its resemblance to YouTube's TV interface was not subtle or accidental.
What Lyons is now signaling is that the content strategy needs to grow into it, because a connected TV experience built primarily around sixty-second Reels won't get meaningful traction.
The caveat here is that Instagram's credibility on long-form content is not exactly pristine. Creators who invested time and energy into IGTV in its early days and then watched the platform abandon the format entirely, have earned a healthy skepticism toward Instagram's long-form commitments. Lyons is essentially asking the creator community to believe that this time, the thinking is more durable, and that the CTV opportunity is real enough to sustain a genuine multi-year investment.
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