A few weeks ago, our team sat staring at a 2 hour 20 minute podcast recording. The conversation was good. We were proud of it, and we knew it would do well on YouTube, where people sit down for long conversations.

Then the news landed. Instagram announced it is testing videos up to 90 minutes long.

We discussed, “Can we put this on Instagram too?” So we cut it down to 90 minutes. It took a lot of critical decisions about which stories to keep and which tangents to drop, and I hadn’t expected it to feel so much like an editor’s job.

And while doing the changes, I thought, is Instagram trying to be YouTube? I guess it’s trying to stop YouTube from keeping the viewers it already has.

What Instagram Is Actually Changing

Here’s what’s been reported so far.

Long-form video, called “Features.” “Features” is the name Instagram is using for this test. It isn’t a product you can switch on yet, and the name could change before launch. It covers long, horizontal videos of up to 90 minutes, such as podcasts, interviews and vlogs. This is Instagram’s first serious long-form push since IGTV, which it launched in 2018 and later shut down. The test is starting in Brazil, with a small US test to follow.

Clips as Reels. A creator can cut a short vertical Reel from a long video, and that Reel links viewers to the full video. This is the same loop podcasters already run on YouTube, where a Short leads to the full episode. Instagram is building it into the product.

A TV experience. Viewers can save a long video and send it to the Instagram app on their TV. Reports mention Samsung, Fire TV, Google TV and a planned Apple TV expansion. Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram, has said TV support “is going to take some time to get right,” so I wouldn’t expect it to be polished yet.

Series and Live. Instagram is also working on a profile section for episodic Reels, similar to playlists, and on better discovery for Live broadcasts.

Until now, Instagram was a place where you watched something for 15 seconds and moved on. These changes are about getting you to stay.

Why Retention Is the Real Story

Platforms care about retention the way a restaurant cares about repeat customers. A new user is expensive, and a user who stays for an hour is where the money is.

Some numbers show the gap:

• Instagram: One 2026 study of more than 24 million posts, reported by Metricool, found the average watch time per Reel reached about 8.5 seconds. That’s more than double the year before, which is good news for Reels but still small next to a long video.
• YouTube: The same report says YouTube’s long-form views grew about 76% in a year. Average view duration fell by more than a third, to about 2.5 minutes, but that is an average over a huge range of videos.
• YouTube benchmarks by length: Creator-side benchmarks suggest a healthy average percentage viewed is 50–70% for videos under 5 minutes, 40–55% for 5–15 minutes, 30–45% for 15–30 minutes, and 25–35% beyond 30 minutes.

That last point surprised me. A 35% retention rate on a 30-minute video means about 10 minutes of watch time. A 60% rate on a 3-minute video is about 1.8 minutes. A “worse” percentage on a long video can still hold a viewer for far longer.

That is Instagram’s problem in one line. Reels get a lot of quick views, but a platform needs minutes watched as well as taps. Mosseri has said Reels drive more shares and DMs than longer content, so Reels aren’t going away. But shares and DMs aren’t the same as hours of watch time, and YouTube has been collecting those hours.

How Instagram Is Competing With YouTube

On format, it’s moving closer to YouTube. It now has long horizontal videos, short clips pointing to them, episodic series, and a TV app.

On money, there’s a large gap, and the early reporting is clear about it. YouTube’s Partner Program pays creators 55% of ad revenue, and YouTube said it paid more than $100 billion to creators, artists and media companies over four years. 

Instagram has no equivalent for long videos. Creators there mostly earn from brand deals and fans, plus a small performance-based program. Mosseri has said Instagram spends more on that program than it makes back “by a long shot.” Meta’s own line is that it’s “too early to share a long-term monetization model.”

So Instagram is competing for attention but hasn’t yet offered a reason for a serious creator to move. Think of it as opening a restaurant next door without a menu.

There’s also a discovery gap. Mosseri has previously said Reels over three minutes aren’t recommended to people who don’t already follow you. If long videos follow a similar pattern, they may mostly reach your existing audience at first.

How to Earn From Instagram Long-Form Right Now

With no ad share, you have to build the revenue into the content yourself. Three things work today:

• Host-read sponsorships inside the edit. Record the sponsor message as part of the episode, in your own voice, so it travels with the video wherever it’s shared. This is how most podcasts already earn, and it doesn’t depend on a platform payout.

• Link stickers in Stories. When you promote a new long video, use a link sticker in Stories to send viewers to the sponsor, a lead form or your newsletter.

• Trackable links in captions. Put a link with a unique tracking tag in the caption, so you can show a sponsor how many people came from Instagram and not just how many watched.

None of this replaces a proper payout, but it lets you prove value to sponsors now.

What I’d Do as a Podcaster

Here is what we’re doing at Dilse Omni, and what I’d suggest to anyone running a podcast.

1. Keep YouTube as the home base. It has the monetization, the search traffic and the habit of long viewing. Instagram’s long-form tools are a test, so don’t rebuild your strategy around them yet.

2. Treat Instagram as a second edit, not a copy. Cutting our episode from 2:20 to 90 minutes taught me that a good long cut isn’t a trimmed version of the original. You cut the weakest 50 minutes, but you also change the pacing, so the best ideas come earlier and the setups are tighter.

The audience matters too. Many YouTube viewers lean back on a TV or laptop, ready to settle in. Most Instagram users are on a phone, mid-scroll, with a thumb ready to move on. So an Instagram cut needs a much faster hook. Put your strongest line or question in the first 30 seconds, and skip the long intros and housekeeping that a YouTube viewer will tolerate. That edit helped our YouTube version as well.

3. Build the clip-to-full-video loop now. Short vertical clips that point to the full episode work today on both platforms. Instagram is formalizing that loop, so the habit will carry over.

4. Watch retention curves, not just views. Look at where people leave. If half your audience drops at minute 12, no platform feature will fix that.

5. Don’t chase every format. Pick the two that fit your content and do them properly.

So, Is Instagram Trying to Be YouTube?

Partly, yes. It’s borrowing YouTube’s best retention habits: long videos, a TV screen, and clips that lead into episodes.

But I don’t think it’s trying to become YouTube. I think it’s trying to make sure that when someone wants to watch a long conversation, they don’t have to leave Instagram to do it. That’s a defensive move, and the missing creator payouts show how early it is.

For us, the 90-minute cut now looks like a small bet that happened to line up with where the platform was heading. I’d like to see how those minutes perform before I call it a strategy.