Instagram is known for ushering in the era of vertical videos. Now the same company has decided to give a shot to landscape videos. Instagram believes that landscape video is suited for long-form content and will help creators get the much-needed traction.
Instagram has been trying hard to make IGTV popular. Apparently, the creators are straying away and put the blame on limited monetisation methods. Unlike YouTube, Instagram doesn’t offer a native monetisation method. Adding to the woes, creators have to spend extra time and resources to produce vertical content. Initially the view counts were less, however, it slowly picked up after Instagram let them share IGTV videos on their feed.
“Today marks yet another change for IGTV – and it once again comes from listening to our creators and viewers. We’ve heard from creators who want to upload landscape videos for IGTV. Similarly, we’ve heard from viewers who come across landscape videos in IGTV but want to watch them in a more natural way.” Instagram commented.
The support for landscape video is by far the biggest change with respect to IGTV. With this change in place, creators should find it relatively easy to create content while the viewership increases as well. One of the biggest advantages is cross-platform compatibility. Content creators can create similar content across multiple channels like YouTube and IGTV.
By default, the videos will still be played in portrait mode and users will need to rotate the phone to activate landscape mode. Instagram believes that this change should encourage content creators to invest more time on IGTV. That being said, the platform still lacks a monetisation channel and this might further discourage the content creators.