It looks like Instagram has given up on its attempt to capture the long-form video market following the company’s move to kill off the IGTV standalone app. In an official blog post on Monday (28 February 2022), Instagram confirmed that it is discontinuing support for the IGTV app thus ending the service as a whole. RIP!
IGTV was introduced by Instagram back in 2018 but the app never actually took off. While IGTV had an audience, most people prefer to use more established video platforms such as YouTube to post their longer videos and use Instagram for posting photos and short videos that are under 1-minute.
The death of IGTV is not something unexpected though. In fact, you could see it from miles away. Last year, Instagram moved IGTV videos back to the main video feed of the Instagram app which negates the need to have a standalone IGTV app in the first place.
Now that IGTV is officially dead, the company said that it will be putting its focus on other aspects of Instagram video and Instagram Reels. Speaking of which, Instagram also announced within the same blog post that it will start showing ads on the Reels feed.
No details have been just given yet on how these ads would function but Instagram confirmed that this would allow content creators to monetise their video on Reels. Bad news for viewers, great news for content creators then. Do expect ads filling up your Instagram Reels feed by the year’s end!
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