IGTV and YouTube

Vaishak Menon

Instagram recently took its first steps in a sector that has been dominated by YouTube. IGTV aims to revolutionise the sector and do something no other social media platform has ever attempted - to steal the crown from YouTube.

A Quick Look At YouTube and Where It Stands

YouTube has it all. It has great content, monetization, easy discovery, it’s a creator’s paradise. It’s got great analytics, giving creators a wonderful insight. Over the years we’ve seen a rise in the quality of content on YouTube, the viewership has risen accordingly as well.

YouTube isn’t just one of the most used social platforms but also the most used video viewing website/app. Most of the videos on other platforms are also taken from YouTube. The closest competitors were Vine and Vimeo, but Vine is long gone now, and Vimeo is well in the background, with a niche set of viewers. On the 20^th of June, a key new player entered, aiming to topple YouTube. Launched by Instagram, IGTV takes a different view on videos.

What’s IGTV?

With its unusual portrait styled videos, IGTV focuses on smartphone users. Adding your existing Instagram following accounts as channels, IGTV makes exploring new content easy. You can create your own Instagram channel easily, and the best part is you can do it right from the Instagram app with your existing account. There also exists a standalone app that you can use. The best part of IGTV just like YouTube is that it focuses on creators, rather than regular content say like news.

Recent surveys also show a dip in TV viewership content, while services like Netflix and YouTube have an impressive rising graph. Most teens these days spend most of their time on YouTube or Instagram, thus making it easy for IGTV to gain traffic. Thus, it’s younger target the fact that it’s built into the Instagram app with notifications every time your favourite accounts post something pulls in more viewership.

Future Expectations 

Sharing your favourite videos with your friends is as simple as sharing a post. Inbuilt into IGTV is Facebook’s Rights Manager Service, that’s already integrated into Instagram. Monetization plays a key role in such services as an incentives for creators to use the platform. Monetization is set to roll out by the end of the year, although the exact method, i.e. via ads, the traditional method or paid subscription hasn’t been revealed yet. Unlike YouTube, the vertical video totally makes it an exclusive platform, because talk shows and music videos aren’t vertical. While the Instagram and IGTV apps currently provide identical experiences, the company hopes that users will increasingly shift to the IGTV app when they are seeking a more immersive and highly-produced video experience — whether that be a two-minute vlog or a premium web series.

Although live videos aren’t a part of IGTV yet, it seems like a possibility. Another interesting feature to note is that videos can be up to 10 minutes long to start, with more popular accounts able to post hour-long videos. Over the long term, the company expects to let all users post videos of unlimited length.

Instagram is known to be the platform for influencers and marketers, especially after the update that let people link products directly to the purchase page. Although they might have initially grown on YouTube, they have a huge following on Instagram. By introducing IGTV, Instagram has made it much simpler for influencers by letting them do everything on a single platform.

The Hurdles

Now despite having a lot of features, Instagram will have to work hard to incentivise creators to move to IGTV. Even though YouTube keeps bringing in new terms and conditions, making it more difficult for newer creators to enter the big club, they still provide monetization that have become the sole livelihoods of a lot of popular stars. After Vine shut down, YouTube and Instagram had become their go-to destinations, but YouTube had become a more lucrative option because of 2 reasons. One, the higher viewership and two, YouTube paid creators using AdSense. Now unless IGTV can devise a way to compete with that, they’re going to find it very difficult to gather creators and thus an audience.

What do you think about the new IGTV? Do let us know in the comments below.