Written by Javern Chua, Fu Youquan and Yeo Yong Lun.
Instagram Adds New Monetization Features For Creators
What was once predominantly an image platform; videos on Instagram have surged in popularity over the past month as socialization moved online. To capitalize on this opportunity, Instagram announced two new methods of monetization: the ability for fans to purchase badges on Instagram Live and the introduction of advertisements on IGTV.
Firstly, badges are an indication of a fan’s support. Purchased during a live video, badges stand out in the comments section and provide an intuitive way to highlight which fan has supported through monetary contributions. Secondly, advertisements will now be nestled within an IGTV video. Lasting up to 15 seconds with the ability to skip ads, Instagram is looking to minimize user disruption while maximizing its potential.
While these features are not groundbreaking, with Twitch and YouTube sporting such features on their respective platforms, they provide creators with a new avenue to monetize their content and provide organizations with a new avenue to promote their content.
Both badges and advertisements are still currently being tested and will only be available to a handful of creators and advertisers in the meantime.
Facebook’s experimental app division has a new app, Collab, that lets you combine three videos into one / take others’ parts to compliment your own for collaborative music making.
The created Collab can be up to 15 seconds in length. You can publish it for others to watch in the app’s feed or to further remix. You can also share across other platforms like on Instagram and Facebook Stories and more. Collab currently has creators using it to fill the feed with usable clips new users can draw from.
As users are hungry for new social and entertainment experiences while stuck at home due to the COVID-19 outbreak, Collab might be a viable app to bring people together virtually through music.
Collab is an invite-only beta on iOS in the US and Canada at the moment, but most people will be able to join Collab as invites roll out in batches. Access to the waitlist is here.
First up, creators will be able to add new music responsive functions to Instagram effects. This allows the filters to change according to the surrounding audio cues. As mentioned by Spark, “you can import and use your own legally licensed music files or you can let people pick a song they like from the thousands of free tracks in Instagram’s music library. This feature is available for Android users today and will be coming to iOS soon.”
They also announced Gallery Picker, a new AR Studio feature that enables creators to develop green screen type effects which users can personalize with their own images. Click here to try the Green Screen effect on your stories.
In addition to all the filters, they also launched ‘Effect Stories’ for Instagram accounts that published effects before, this allows creators to view up to 25 stories from users that have posted stories featuring their effects.
