Instagram IGTV: could content monetization be possible soon?

In this day and age, being a content creator on social media platforms has become a profession. Many social networks now offer ways to make money from being entertaining and original.

However, Instagram does not offer a direct option to monetize content and earn profit, the only way to earn money from the platform is to look for sponsorship or product placement. That applies to Instagram’s IGTV app as well. Even though the app, which launched in 2018, offered interesting features (such as full-screen vertical videos, watching videos of your favorite Instagram creators), it did not gain popularity and video creators have been focusing on YouTube and other platforms to make a living. Having said that, it is possible that things might change soon.

Reverse-engineering specialist Jane Manchun Wong has posted on Twitter about a new feature for IGTV, which will allegedly allow influencers to monetize content with ads if they are deemed eligible. No criteria for eligibility has been posted yet. Apparently, when monetizing your content, you will have to agree with and follow the Partner Program Monetization Policies. Whether those will be different from Facebook’s is still uncertain, but unlikely. For example, some of Facebook’s rules for monetization are: following the Community Standards about decency, avoiding clickbaits or soliciting engagement, abstaining from commenting on social issues, tragedy or conflict, refraining from inappropriate language or explicit content, avoiding to post misleading information and other.


Instagram’s CEO, Adam Mosseri, has replied to TechCrunch in a Twitter post that they are indeed exploring this feature. However, he stated that the option is not functional yet and more exploration and research are needed in order to make monetized IGTV videos sustainable. At the current moment, the IGTV platform does not possess a lot of quality content, as most content creators have oriented themselves towards other platforms, such as YouTube.

As reported by Bloomberg Technology, Instagram has allegedly earned about $20 billion in ad revenue for 2019, while YouTube has brought in around $15 billion. The difference is that YouTube is paying creators, while at the moment, Instagram is not. However, in order not to lose content creators to other platforms, maybe it’s time for Instagram to focus on providing the needed environment to keep its creators on board and maybe even bring in more.