Everything is TV now, and the competition is heating up. Instagram’s deal with Samsung will put the social-media app’s videos on more screens, challenging both YouTube for creator loyalty and Netflix, which has been moving into influencer content. All three continue to peel eyeballs away from cable TV.
Instagram now has the distribution, via Samsung’s estimated 68 million smart TVs across the US, and the content, courtesy of influencers and creators, to compete for the middle screen. Its challenge is making Instagram a primary platform for creators, not just a way to funnel fans to their YouTube pages, where pay for personalities like MrBeast is higher. It’s also getting ready to introduce longer-form videos on Instagram.
“We’re late to the game,” Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said last year on Semafor’s Mixed Signals. “There’s an immense amount of time spent on TV, where some of our competition is showing up with force.”
The question is whether Meta will make its own content, as it tried to do several years ago when it financed high-quality production for shows like Jada Pinkett Smith’s Red Table Talks, or simply monetize what those influencers are already posting and split the money. A Meta spokesperson told Semafor “not yet” when asked about a renewed effort on original programming.
Either way, Instagram’s push onto larger (notably, horizontal) screens signals a shift. For years, it was Netflix who gave cable companies heartburn. Now, podcasts are on our TVs, cable companies are trying to buy them, and YouTube is television for a younger generation.