Instagram announces its latest strategy to compete with TikTok

In an attempt to compete with rival platform TikTok, Instagram has announced its plans to offer content creators up to $35,000 to post videos to its Reels feature. 

This follows an announcement earlier in the year, in which CEO Mark Zuckerberg pledged to introduce a $1 billion incentive program for creators using reels.

TikTok was launched in China in September 2016 and the company has rapidly become the world’s most popular service for short-form video content, particularly with younger audiences. 

As of 2020, the platform had 837 million monthly active users and had been downloaded over three billion times by users from all around the world, making it major competition for Instagram. 

Now, Meta, which is the new parent company of both Facebook and Instagram, has decided to try and entice some of TikTok’s audience to its own platform using the new bonus system. 

According to a TechCrunch post, Meta is now offering a Reels Play offer that includes bonuses of up to $35,000 creators who use Reels, its own program for short-form videos. 

This top bonus would be paid to a single video producer if they managed to get 58.31 million views in a month for their content, with other creators potentially receiving smaller amounts.  

There are reports that many creators are unsure about what bonuses they are eligible for. And, at the moment, Instagram still hasn’t provided any clarification. However, as this program is still experimental and not fully developed, it’s hoped there will be more news in the coming weeks.

If successful, it’s also believed that other platforms will follow Instagram’s example and start paying content creators in a bid to drive more traffic on their own apps. 

Snapchat has already introduced “Spotlight Challenges”, which provides rewards and prizes of between $250 to $25,000 from a prize pool. YouTube is also offering between $100 and $10,000 each month to creators as part of its “Shorts” program.