Instagram Cuts Payouts for Makers of Short Videos

Instagram has cut down on the payments to makers of short videos, changing its strategy as it competes with TikTok for influencers and traffic, the Financial Times reported Tuesday (April 5).

The Meta-owned platform pays influencers based on the views received on clips called Reels. The money is capped at a maximum per month.

Reels is invite-only and available for some users in the U.S.

Some creators told FT that payments for Reels have been down for the past few weeks by as much as 70%. The threshold for getting paid is over 10 times higher, the report said.

Instagram debuted the program in 2021 as TikTok was seeing sustained popularity. Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has blamed TikTok for stealing attention from Facebook and his company’s other social media apps.

Influencers reportedly haven’t been given a reason for the revised payouts. The move comes in spite of the company saying it was focusing more on videos.

In addition, FT writes that creators have reportedly seen engagement including numbers of views, likes, shares and comments, drop on Instagram — the algorithm has been favoring Carousels, a series of still images in one post.

FT wrote that Meta lost over $220 billion from its market valuation in February. Around that time, it had warned that users were spending more time on TikTok.

Read more: Instagram Upgrades DM Inbox With Music Sharing, Polls, More

PYMNTS wrote that Instagram has recently updated its messaging features with the intention of improving connections.

Instagram users will be able to send people music clips, reshare content and reply to direct messages while scrolling, and quickly see who’s online.

And in addition, users will be able to play, pause and replay 30-second snippers of music from Apple Music, Amazon Music and Spotify.