IGTV Monetization is coming! But what does that mean?

How Monetization Works

YouTube has been an amazing social media platform for years! People love to consume the videos and creators can supplement their income by essentially selling ad space at various points in their videos. You may have heard of people “monetizing” or having videos “demonetized.”  If your videos have a lot of views, you can receive a good amount of money from monetizing your videos and running ads.  YouTube sometimes demonetizes videos or entire channels if the creators are infringing on copyrights or not following community guidelines.

How Will IGTV Monetization Look?

IGTV, Instagram’s long-form video area is currently prototyping video monetization.  This could be a big deal for creators and influencers who’ve not had a direct path to making money on Instagram before. I mean, there are already a plethora of ways to make money on the platform. There’s affiliate marketing, selling shootouts and building your own brand.

While IGTV monetization probably wouldn’t pay the bills, having another income stream coming in from the platform will sure be nice.

The monetization here is similar to Facebook Watch, where creators get 55% of ad revenue.  The ads will likely run in the middle of videos, rather than at the beginning, which will help with viewer retention.

Oh Yeah! It’s All Coming Together

I’m glad that Instagram is finally exploring this feature. They’ve recently made changes to their algorithm that makes influencer marketing slightly more difficult, perhaps in hopes of driving more revenue towards the app itself.  This shows that they’re realizing other options that are good for both influencers and the platform itself.

If you’d like to know how to bulk up your engaged audience (or gain an engaged audience) so that monetization can be seamless, check out my strategy sessions where I give you a detailed gameplan about where to go next with your Instagram strategy.