Meta Tests 90-Minute Instagram Videos on Living-Room Televisions

Meta Platforms has begun testing a long-form video format called "Features" on Instagram, allowing creators to publish horizontal videos running up to 90 minutes. According to an analysis published by Yahoo Finance (https://www.tikr.com/blog/scott-galloway-zuckerberg-is-clearly-coming-for-youtube-and-its-16-of-tv-time?ref=yahoofinance&tlnk=yf-261102-r3g7mrwf&.tsrc=rss), the pilot is currently limited to creators in Brazil and a select cohort in the United States, paired with a living-room push as Instagram's TV app arrives on Apple TV alongside existing distribution on Amazon Fire TV, Google TV, and Samsung screens.

The living-room deployment targets a viewing segment long controlled by streaming incumbents and Alphabet's YouTube. Speaking on the Prof G Markets podcast, market commentator Scott Galloway argued that Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg is mounting a calculated assault on YouTube's television footprint. Galloway estimated that YouTube accounts for roughly 16% of total television viewing time, double the 8% captured by Netflix.

Meta intends to back the expansion with its scale of 3 billion users and an advertising infrastructure powered by heavy computational outlays. The company's capital expenditures have more than tripled since 2021, with executive guidance projecting 2026 capital spending between $135 billion and $145 billion, including finance-lease principal. On its third-quarter earnings call, Meta management attributed conversion rate improvements ranging from 1.4% to 9.6% directly to recent enhancements in its machine learning ad-ranking models.

Long-form video represents familiar and historically difficult terrain for Meta. The company rolled out IGTV in 2018 as a standalone hub for extended clips before abandoning the product. In a video announcing the latest pilot, Instagram head Adam Mosseri acknowledged his own past skepticism, noting that he had long opposed introducing long-form video to the platform.

Creator compensation remains the primary unresolved hurdle for the initiative. YouTube distributes roughly half of its advertising revenue to channel operators through its partner program, whereas Instagram is currently providing direct payments to select trial participants without outlining a broader revenue-sharing framework. Meta has the financial room to fund incentives, though higher infrastructure costs have compressed profitability: third-quarter operating margin stood at 35.4% excluding a legal charge, down from 40.1% a year earlier.

Incumbents show no intention of ceding television share easily. On a recent episode of Decoder, Peacock President Matt Strauss observed that YouTube's platform architecture and underlying monetization engine continue to drive sustained expansion across television screens. The long-term viability of Instagram's TV ambitions will ultimately hinge on whether Meta establishes a durable creator monetization model that rivals YouTube's payout structure.