Presumably to compete with YouTube and millennial favourite Snapchat, Instagram has increased its video time – to 60 seconds. The platform introduced 15-second videos in 2014, which I reckoned at the time was intended to elbow poor old six-second Vine out of the way.
You don’t hear a lot about Vine anymore, do you?
Facebook – owner of Instagram – has also been pushing video, and is continuing to extend its own functionality to Instagram in a bid to make it pay its way.
The most recent change happened earlier this year but was only open to advertisers. I don’t know if making it available to all users was part of the plan but it’s definitely an attempt to make those weirdly long videos blend in better.
Does this mean video editing tools are coming?
You’d hope so. Most of us are – in all honesty – pretty terrible at shooting videos.
This homespun look can work in some marketing and does make content seem very genuine, but it’s not great if you’re using Instagram to release new products or serious interviews.
Right now, all you can do with a video on Instagram is add a filter, do a basic cut and choose a start frame. That’s enough for your average user but what about brands? The amateur setup looks even more restrictive when we start talking about minute-long videos – those are real adverts.
What about analytics?
As these longer videos pave the way for companies to go hardcore on Instagram advertising, you’ve got to ask where the proof is. Today, an account holder can see how many views their video has had, and if you’re doing some paid ads, you can see reach and impressions.
But that’s not enough. What’s a ‘view’? I scroll over a whole bunch of autoplay video every day; that doesn’t mean I’m viewing it. 60 seconds is a long time and there’s going to be a common drop-off point in there. If I were considering investing in Instagram video, I’d be wanting a lot more feedback on what it’s doing for me.
Instagram says video viewing time grew 40% in the last 6 months. That’s cool – but I need more than that. Maybe the community grew by 40%. Maybe 40% more videos were posted (hello advertisers).
I’ll be waiting right here for my analytics, thank you.
[bctt tweet=”60-second #Instagramvideos – good news or bad? How will we even tell without proper analytics?”]
