Instagram is coming for YouTube's crown with long-form videos

That hilarious podcast clip in your Reels feed has one awkward ending: the rest is on YouTube. Instagram wants to rewrite that ending, and Google’s video giant might finally have a rival with the audience to make it interesting.

Instagram is testing Features, a format for horizontal videos up to 90 minutes long. Following an earlier trial in Brazil, select US creators can now experiment with full-length podcasts, comedy specials, and other long-form content. Reels can link directly to the full videos, and Instagram also plans to recommend them through Explore. Eventually, the experience should reach its growing TV app.

Instagram boss Adam Mosseri even admits in the announcement video with product VP Tessa Lyons that he was once “against doing long-form video on Instagram.” He argued that quick clips encourage people to share and connect. Now, he hopes short and long videos can be “symbiotic.” Put differently, the Reel becomes the trailer, not the final destination.

Three billion reasons for YouTube to pay attention

Instagram announced 3 billion monthly active users in September 2025, alongside 4.5 billion daily Reels reshares across Meta’s apps. That’s sharing, not viewing, so it cannot be directly compared with YouTube’s 200 billion daily Shorts views reported in 2025. YouTube also surpassed one billion daily viewing hours on TVs, and the official press page describes its monthly logged-in audience as “billions” without an exact figure.

Still, Instagram isn’t building an audience from scratch. Billions of people already scroll through videos, discover creators, and share content. The challenge is convincing them to stay when those creators have something longer to say. With Features, Instagram can potentially turn those fleeting encounters into extended viewing sessions without sending users elsewhere.

The two platforms have borrowed from each other’s playbooks before. Instagram embraced short-form video with Reels as TikTok took off, while YouTube responded with Shorts. Now Instagram wants a bigger slice of the long-form market that YouTube dominates. And unlike Vimeo, Dailymotion, or even creator-backed Nebula, Instagram already has a massive audience to work with.

But that doesn’t make life any easier for Instagram. YouTube doesn’t just attract creators with its audience; it pays them, too. Eligible YouTube creators receive 55% of net watch-page advertising revenue. Meanwhile, Instagram is working on creator deals and allowing existing sponsorships, but hasn’t announced comparable standard ad-revenue sharing for Features.

Without that incentive, creators might happily upload their existing content to Instagram while keeping YouTube as their primary home. We’ve also seen Instagram try its hand at longer videos before with IGTV, which ultimately failed to establish itself. Features has a potentially stronger distribution strategy, but its success will depend on whether creators and audiences embrace it beyond the initial excitement.

Still, genuine competition is worth welcoming. YouTube’s grip on long-form video has remained largely unchallenged, and viewers could benefit from having another platform powerful enough to push it to do better.

Meta might not be everyone’s idea of a consumer-friendly challenger, but YouTube doesn’t necessarily need a saintly rival. It needs one that makes complacency expensive. Instagram certainly has the numbers and infrastructure to try. But only time will tell whether its long-form ambitions can finally make it a powerful rival.