Instagram is bringing its Reels to a TV screen near you. On Amazon Fire TV devices, the Meta-owned social media platform is testing an app that turns its library of vertical short-form videos into a form of living room entertainment.
Earlier this month, Instagram announced that it would begin rolling out a TV hub to bring Reels “from your favorite creators to the big screen so you can enjoy them with friends.” Like YouTube, Instagram is making its short-form videos flashier by borrowing design elements from premium streaming services like Netflix. Multiple accounts can be linked to a single Instagram on TV app, Reels are sorted into granular categories, and a search feature lets users look up specific channels.
This is the first time Instagram has rearranged its Reels for TV-based consumers, but it’s not the first time the company has rolled the dice on living room viewership. Longtime tech observers may remember that in 2018, Instagram launched IGTV, a long-form hub that was designed to compete with YouTube and its TV screen empire. Though IGTV offered content from top creators and boldly reimagined what an Instagram feed could look like, it didn’t last three years before it was subsumed into the entity then known as Instagram Video.
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Half a decade later, shifting media diets have convinced Instagram to take another crack at a TV-based offering. Over the summer, a report in The Information claimed that Meta was building a new TV app that would put short-form video front and center. The introduction of linked Reels provided further evidence that Meta was reimagining its quick-hitting videos as a form of leaned-back, serial entertainment.
TV viewership habits may have changed since 2018, but Instagram for TV’s goal is the same as IGTV’s: Meta wants to compete with YouTube. After Google’s video hub brought its Shorts to TVs in 2022, it saw its living room traffic shoot upward. Some creators have reported getting as much as 40% of their traffic from TVs, and through that medium, older viewers are watching more YouTube than ever before. In the most recent edition of Nielsen’s The Gauge report, YouTube accounted for 12.9% of TV screen watch time. No other service got more than 8.3% of that pie.
Keeping up with YouTube is a tall task, but even the leader in TV screen viewership has experienced some blips. Instagram has an opening to scoop up more living room viewers, and if it can, it is likely to bring more features to its new TV app. The introductory blog post explained that new perks like “using your phone as a remote, intuitive ways to channel surf, shared feeds with friends, and making it easier to keep up with your favorite creators in one place” could be coming to the hub in the near future.
