While Instagram is playing around with temporary creator monetization programs and its head Adam Mosseri has told users it “couldn’t afford” to continue paying them performance bonuses for their Reels, it’s been raking in more ad revenue per year than YouTube.
According to a new court filing (which is from a case where Instagram parent Meta is trying to get a judge to dismiss an antitrust claim against it for its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, btw), Instagram brought in $32.4 billion worth of ad revenue in 2021, Business Insider reports.
That same year, YouTube brought in $28.8 billion–and passed a large portion of that revenue on to creators, who make 55% of revenue for ads run on their long-form videos. (Shorts, at the time, were a different story, but they’re now generating ad revenue for creators, too.)
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The $32.4 billion Instagram generated accounted for 27% of Meta’s total 2021 revenue, across all its platforms and products.
Also in 2021, Meta proposed the Reels Play bonus program as part of what it said was a $1 billion commitment to helping creators build sustainable businesses. But it shut the bonus program down in 2023, and now is giving out intermittent seasonal bonuses, like its current “spring bonus,” which is reportedly capped at $30,000 per creator for 30 days of video and photo post performance.
Instagram’s big ad revenue numbers weren’t a new thing in 2021: According to the filing, it made $11.3 billion in 2018, $17.9 billion in 2019, and $22 billion in 2020.
It made $16.5 billion in just the first half of 2022.
So, what does this mean for monetization? Will Instagram ever shift to a more YouTube-esque revenue-sharing system? Can creators ever expect to make dependable monthly revenue like they do with AdSense?
We’re not counting on it.
