Love it or hate it, video is driving higher engagement rates on Instagram
Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2025 4:50 am
Instagram may have been forced to backtrack on its attempts to introduce more video and recommended content into its feed, but parent company Meta remains determined to press ahead with changes to the platform for the long term.
On a call with analysts to discuss the company’s second-quarter results — which saw Meta post its first-ever revenue decline — Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said strong growth in Reels was driving engagement on Instagram and Facebook, with the time people spent watching Reels content on the platforms up 30% during the most recent quarter.
“Last quarter, I shared that Reels already accounted for 20% of the time people spend on Instagram . This quarter, we’ve seen an increase of over 30% in the time people spend engaging with Reels across Facebook and Instagram,” Zuckerberg said.
“AI advancements are driving many of these improvements and one example is that vp safety email database after launching a new AI model for recommendations, we saw a 15% increase in watch time on the Reels video player on Facebook alone.”
Over the past two months, Meta has introduced sweeping changes to the feeds of its two largest social media platforms. In particular, Instagram was testing a 9:16 full-screen format for videos and photos, and had begun promoting recommended content in users’ feeds.
But in the face of strong user reaction to these changes, Instagram announced on Friday that it had disabled the full-screen test and would reduce the percentage of recommended content, for the time being.
On Facebook, Meta has introduced separate “Feed” and “Home” tabs to delineate between followed content – friends, pages and groups – and recommended content. When users open Facebook, recommended content on the Home tab will appear first.
On a call with analysts to discuss the company’s second-quarter results — which saw Meta post its first-ever revenue decline — Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said strong growth in Reels was driving engagement on Instagram and Facebook, with the time people spent watching Reels content on the platforms up 30% during the most recent quarter.
“Last quarter, I shared that Reels already accounted for 20% of the time people spend on Instagram . This quarter, we’ve seen an increase of over 30% in the time people spend engaging with Reels across Facebook and Instagram,” Zuckerberg said.
“AI advancements are driving many of these improvements and one example is that vp safety email database after launching a new AI model for recommendations, we saw a 15% increase in watch time on the Reels video player on Facebook alone.”
Over the past two months, Meta has introduced sweeping changes to the feeds of its two largest social media platforms. In particular, Instagram was testing a 9:16 full-screen format for videos and photos, and had begun promoting recommended content in users’ feeds.
But in the face of strong user reaction to these changes, Instagram announced on Friday that it had disabled the full-screen test and would reduce the percentage of recommended content, for the time being.
On Facebook, Meta has introduced separate “Feed” and “Home” tabs to delineate between followed content – friends, pages and groups – and recommended content. When users open Facebook, recommended content on the Home tab will appear first.