Instagram is making its biggest push into long-form video since it pulled the plug on IGTV. According to The Hollywood Reporter‘s Caitlin Huston, the app began testing a format called Features on Monday, letting select U.S. creators upload horizontal videos that run up to 90 minutes. Podcasters, comedians and other creators who make longer shows are the first targets.

Reels become the trailer

The idea is to turn short clips into a doorway rather than a dead end. Creators will be able to link their Reels, which usually run three minutes or less, to the full-length Feature, so a viewer who catches a good podcast moment can keep watching the whole episode without leaving the app.

“What you’re now going to be able to do is, you see a clip of a podcast that you love, you can just click and continue watching or watch the full video,” Tessa Lyons, Instagram’s vice president of product, told The Hollywood Reporter. Features will also be recommended on the Explore page and elsewhere in the app, which means long videos can reach people who don’t already follow the creator.

Instagram already ran the format with creators in Brazil, and it plans to expand the U.S. test to tens of thousands of creators. Early participants named by The Hollywood Reporter include Skims co-founder and podcast host Emma Grede, beauty and fashion creator Monet McMichael, street interviewer Preston Rakovsky and football creator Donald De La Haye.

A change of heart from Mosseri

The move is a notable turn for Instagram head Adam Mosseri. As The Next Web points out, Mosseri had long been wary of long-form video, worried that more passive watching would crowd out the friend-to-friend sharing he sees as the heart of the app. Now he is pitching short and long videos as partners. “We want to be the most culturally relevant platform, and to do that, we need to show up where people are,” he said in an interview with creators Colin and Samir, as quoted by The Next Web.

The outlet also notes that this is Instagram’s second try at the format. IGTV launched in 2018 as a separate app for longer clips and was shut down in 2022.

Built for the living room

Features will play on phones, but Instagram clearly has bigger screens in mind. Lyons told The Hollywood Reporter that the best experience for long horizontal video is “on a big, horizontal screen,” and that she expects much of the deep viewing to happen there over time. The Instagram TV app, already available on Samsung, Fire TV and Google TV, is expanding to Apple TV in the U.S., and The Next Web reports the TV app will put Features front and center.

According to Digital Trends‘ Manisha Priyadarshini, Instagram is also experimenting with Series, a home for episodic Reels on a creator’s profile aimed at the growing microdrama trend, plus live videos inside the Reels tab that can be shown to non-followers. Series is expected to arrive in the U.S. by the end of this year or early next year.

The money question

Here is the catch for creators. YouTube’s big advantage remains its revenue share, which gives qualified creators 55 percent of ad revenue, The Hollywood Reporter notes. Instagram is not matching that yet. The Next Web reports that Instagram doesn’t plan to share ad revenue from Features with creators for now, though it hasn’t ruled it out down the road.

What Instagram is offering instead is flexibility and deal help. There is no exclusivity, so creators can post the same videos on YouTube or anywhere else, unlike Netflix’s podcast deals. Existing brand placements carry over into Features, and Lyons said Instagram will also help creators who don’t yet have sponsors find them. “There’s a big opportunity for us to help creators who don’t yet have that infrastructure and that business behind them,” she said. Lyons added that Instagram is working on “a few different deals” with the early creators.

The takeaway

Features is Instagram’s clearest attempt yet to fight YouTube, Netflix and Disney for creators’ full-length shows. For creators, the upside is real: a huge built-in audience, Reels that funnel viewers straight to full episodes, and no exclusivity strings. But until Instagram shares ad money, it works best as an extra distribution channel and a place to sell sponsorships, not a replacement for platforms that pay creators directly.