Instagram reportedly offers creators up to $500,000 for long videos.
Instagram has offered some creators one-off payments, reportedly up to $500,000, to post to Features, its new format for videos up to 90 minutes, Business Insider reported on 29 October. Meta hasn't confirmed the figures but says it pays some creators for Features content.
Business Insider's report, picked up by Social Media Today on 1 November, puts the smaller offers at $50,000 per creator, with some larger deals running into six figures and the biggest at $500,000. A Meta spokesperson told the publication the company is “funding Features content directly with some creators” but didn't comment on the amounts. Business Insider's headline frames the deals as an effort to win over YouTube creators.
Instagram announced Features on 26 October; the test was already running in Brazil and is expanding to a small group in the US. Adam Mosseri, Instagram's head, said in a social post that the economics matter a great deal for long-form creators and that his team is looking at several ways to pay them. Social Media Today points to the obvious gap: YouTube's Partner Program shares ad revenue on long videos, while Instagram has no comparable revenue share for this format yet.
Meta has tried this before. It paid creators to post to IGTV, its earlier long-video product, and later shut that down. Social Media Today argues that up-front payments usually bring a burst of posts around the promotion rather than lasting habits, so the test is whether Instagram follows the cheques with a revenue-share model. It hasn't said what that model would be, which creators received offers, or when Features will reach more markets.
For marketers in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, where Instagram remains a core platform for creator campaigns, Features isn't available yet. Our read: if Meta does attach revenue sharing and ads to long videos, branded series and longer creator integrations could move from YouTube to Instagram, so it's worth watching before 2027 creator budgets are fixed.
Why it matters
Paying creators for long videos suggests Meta is serious about rivalling YouTube, which could later open longer branded formats on Instagram for Gulf campaigns.
Related trends.
GWI: Middle East and Africa watch the most long-form video
GWI's Global Media Intelligence Report 2026 finds that internet users in the Middle East and Africa lean harder on long-form video, vlogs included, than users in any other world region. Latin America leads on social media, short-form video, online press and podcasts.
Why it mattersRegional users spend more time on long-form video than elsewhere, but the data is a Middle East and Africa average, not Gulf-specific.
LinkedIn passes 1.4bn members as creator ads rise 63%
LinkedIn says time spent on the platform rose 15% year on year last quarter and membership has passed 1.4 billion. Chief executive Daniel Shapero also said ads featuring creators grew 63% and paid video ads 25%.
Why it mattersLinkedIn is betting on video and creator-led ads, and B2B campaigns built around those formats are the ones the platform is now pushing.
Pinterest hits 661m monthly users as European revenue stalls
Pinterest reached a record 661 million monthly active users in the third quarter, up 10% on a year earlier, and grew revenue 12% to $1.174bn. Almost all the revenue growth came from the US and Canada, while Europe was flat.
Why it mattersPinterest's user growth is coming from markets where it earns little per user, so it is opening up programmatic buying to sell that audience.
