In order to reward producers for creating Reels and achieving certain milestones, Meta is stopping its program. The program encouraged content creators to produce more brief video content when it was first offered in 2021. The Instagram program was only open to producers residing in the U.S., therefore the shutdown will affect all Reels creators on Instagram and Facebook.
The program’s cancellation, which was first reported by Business Insider, suggests that platforms want to stop compensating creators based on how well-liked their short films are. According to the article, Meta will continue to honor any bonus commitments for a period of 30 days.
If Reels enters a new market, Meta told the publication that it might revive the program using “tailored” methods. Given that the short video product is now available in more than 150 countries, it seems a little odd to hear this.
As previously reported by TechCrunch, this scheme offered generous compensation to artists. Many creators received bonuses in excess of $10,000, and some even claimed to receive $35,000 in a single month. Yet in order for their reels to be successful, these producers needed millions of views, and Meta was eager to give money away to promote the format.
Given that short videos are currently one of the most popular content types on social media, Meta is certainly attempting to rake in advertising dollars. In addition to showing in-stream advertisements, it also expanded its overlay ad trial to producers in more than 50 countries last year. The corporation gives the designers of both of these ad formats a 55% cut of the profits.
Reels has a $1 billion annual income rate, according to Mark Zuckerberg’s statement from last year. Yet, the business would like to see the format bring in more revenue while it spends money on metaverse initiatives.
Reels aren’t yet earning enough money, according to Zuckerberg, who stated this on the investor call for Meta’s Q4 2022 results.
“Improving monetization efficiency, or the money made per minute of reels watched, is the next bottleneck that we are concentrating on to keep reels expanding. Reels currently has a substantially lower monetization efficiency than Feed. Hence, as Reels expands, we actually lose money even though it increases system engagement overall because it diverts attention from Feed.
Creators would need incentives to post short videos on Meta’s platforms rather than TikTok or YouTube Shorts since the business is discontinuing bonuses. Facebook has pledged to provide creators with new monetization opportunities so they can make money on Reels.
We’re concentrating on modifying and improving these [monetization] technologies for short-form video this year. In a blog post earlier this week, Facebook CEO Tom Alison stated, “We’ll keep growing our ads on Facebook Reels testing to support more creators in generating ad money for their Reels and extending virtual gifting via Stars on Reels.
But when it comes to banning creator benefits for brief videos, Meta is not an outlier. Instead of lavishing money on creator funds, both Snapchat and YouTube Shorts have switched to ad revenue-sharing structures.