Instagram is making a major push to capture a significantly larger share of the global entertainment landscape, launching a series of ambitious new tests designed to accommodate long-form videos, podcasts, and episodic storytelling on the platform. The Meta-owned social media giant, long dominant in the realm of snappy photography and short-form media, is preparing to introduce a suite of products that could fundamentally change how users consume video content, bridging the gap between quick scrolling on mobile devices and deep-dive viewing on living room television sets.
Starting Monday, Instagram will initiate a targeted test of horizontal videos lasting up to 90 minutes. This new product, called Features, is specifically aimed at podcasters, comedians, and other long-form creators who have traditionally relied on platforms like YouTube to host their full-length productions. Under the new system, creators will have the ability to seamlessly connect viewers from the platform’s ubiquitous short-form Reels—which typically run for around three minutes or less—directly to the full-length horizontal video.
Tessa Lyons, vice president of product at Instagram, explained the mechanics of the new user experience during a recent discussion about the strategy. What users will now be able to do is watch a captivating clip of a podcast or a comedy set that they love, and with a single click, continue watching or transition directly to the full video. Because creators will be able to link these Reels to their overall feature profile, audiences can dive in and experience the entire production without friction.
The platform has already been quietly testing the long-form feature with a select group of creators in Brazil, and it now has a concrete plan to expand the trial to tens of thousands of creators across the United States. Furthermore, these extended videos will be algorithmically recommended to users via Instagram’s dedicated Explore page and integrated into other high-traffic areas of the application. Among the early roster of creators participating in the initial tests are notable names such as podcast host and Skims co-founder Emma Grede, beauty and fashion creator Monet McMichael, Preston Rakovsky—known for interviewing everyday New Yorkers about love and relationships—and football content creator Donald De La Haye.
This strategic pivot arrives as mainstream entertainment companies, including Netflix and Disney, increasingly incorporate podcasts and independent creator videos into their respective platforms. These legacy media giants are all fighting a persistent battle to capture more consumer viewing hours and challenge the reigning titan of online video, YouTube. For Instagram and its competitors, however, one of the most formidable challenges in taking on YouTube has been countering that platform’s lucrative revenue-sharing models. YouTube has long maintained a powerful draw for top-tier talent by offering qualified creators 55 percent of advertising revenue while actively helping them generate lucrative brand deals.
Addressing how Instagram plans to compete in this financial arena, Lyons noted that the company is currently working on a few different commercial deals with the early wave of creators participating in the Features pilot. Unlike some of the exclusive arrangements pursued by competitors—such as Netflix’s deals for specific podcasts—Instagram’s approach currently involves no strict exclusivity requirements regarding where else creators can publish their videos. Additionally, any existing advertising deals that creators already have in place will seamlessly carry over into their Instagram-hosted videos. At the same time, the platform intends to work closely with creators who do not yet have established monetization placements to help them secure lucrative partnerships.
For established creators who already possess those existing relationships, Lyons pointed out that they can bring their content directly onto the platform along with those existing placements and branded content deals. Simultaneously, Instagram views this as a major opportunity to build out infrastructure and business models for emerging creators who do not yet have that commercial backing behind them.
While Features will naturally be available for viewing on mobile devices, Instagram’s ultimate ambition is to extend this viewing experience directly onto living room television sets. The company’s TV initiative officially launched last year through partnerships with major hardware and operating system providers, including Samsung, Fire TV, and Google TV. Now, that footprint is expanding further with the introduction of support for Apple TV in the United States, marking a critical milestone in Instagram’s broader push into the traditional entertainment landscape.
Lyons emphasized that the company strongly believes the best viewing experience for long-form horizontal content is naturally found on a large horizontal screen. Consequently, the leadership team expects a significant portion of deep, immersive consumption to happen on television displays over time, shifting the paradigm of how social media content is consumed in the home.
In tandem with the push for long-form horizontal video, Instagram is also addressing the booming popularity of microdramas and the surging demand among creators for serialized, episodic content. To accommodate this trend, the company has been experimenting with a feature called Series, which provides a dedicated home for episodic Reels directly on a creator’s profile page. In June, the social media firm began reaching out to microdrama studios operating in Southeast Asia to test the capabilities of the feature, and it has since expanded those outreach efforts to individual independent creators who are already experimenting with their own serialized narratives.
Over the coming months, Instagram plans to broaden the testing grounds for the Series feature to additional international countries, with a planned rollout to the United States slated for either late this year or early next year. Technical teams have also begun testing how this episodic content will visually appear and function when adapted for television screens.
These major video initiatives join several other innovative features that Instagram has been actively testing around the world. Among them is the integration of live video directly into the dedicated Reels tab, alongside functionality that surfaces live streams to audiences who do not currently follow the broadcasting user. This particular capability is currently launching in regional markets including Indonesia and Brazil, with concrete plans already in place to expand the live video distribution tests to the United States next year as part of Instagram’s ongoing evolution of its core discovery engine.