With the recent introduction of IGTV to the Instagram platform, everyone seems to be asking the question, what is it? IGTV (Instagram TV) was created to solve the issue of video length limitation that many Instagram users were experiencing. With video length capped at 60 seconds for posts and 15 seconds for stories, many users were unhappy they could not post videos of significant length to the popular platform.
IGTV now allows users to upload videos of up to 1 hour! This is a real game changer for us social media marketers, now allowing similar opportunities to that of YouTube. IGTV gives brands an opportunity to tell a longer story, this will now be included in their social digital strategy when planning.
Instagram has introduced IGTV at the perfect time. Video content has become increasingly popular across the web, with engagement levels soaring when it comes to video vs photo. Take Instagram Stories for example; there are more than 300 million people posting Instagram Stories on a daily basis. Now that’s a whole lot of content and engaged users!
Similar to Instagram Stories, IGTV has maintained a vertical video format, which makes sense as majority of it's users are viewing the platform vertically via their smartphones.
Throughout the next 12 months, we are excited to watch IGTV expand as more and more brands adapt their content for the platform. We predict we’ll see some pretty creative content to come from inspiring and creative Instagram accounts!
Our advice to brands is to get content up on IGTV early, as it’s not yet overcrowded and thus gives brands a unique opportunity to stand out amongst their competitors.
What should we expect next?
If we were to follow Instagram’s most recent behaviour, we would expect ads to be added to the IGTV mix. It’s also likely they will introduce ‘shoppable’ videos, similar to what we’ve seen added to Instagram posts, where users can purchase content directly from links built into the Instagram platform.