Thanks to The Situation, live-stream view counts are living the dream on Instagram: a whopping 70% increase from February to March. That’s a lot of Dalgona whipped-coffee tutorials… and now the ‘gram has rolled out updates to help creators cash in on all that sweet caffeinated content.
How will cooking lessons and workout routines translate to earning actual income? There are a couple of ways creators will be able to monetize. The first is Badges, where followers can straight-up shower you with (virtual) love and (actual) money. Basically, viewers can buy “hearts” during a livestream and send them to their crushes favorite broadcasters during the stream. In return, the content creator might give them a personalized shout-out… or that all-important 😍 emoji.
Whatever. Revenue is revenue.
Instagram is rolling out this featureset slowly, and won’t be taking any Badge revenue for its own coffers just yet. Makes sense; with people stuck at home, platforms need content and lots of it, so Badges provide an incentive for more people to get online and try streaming. Still, we’ll bet you our 😎 emoji that Instagram will be taking a cut of the money as soon as that doesn’t look bad.
Over on longer-form channel IGTV, there are now… commercials. (Yay?) The ads—all optimized for mobile, max length 15 seconds—start when a preview is clicked to view. Sephora and Puma are early adopters, but for now the whole thing’s a big ol’ beta. IGTV will have to see if fans start gathering or if video views head south. At first, content creators will reap 55% of the ad revenue.
What’s next? There’s now Live Shopping, where creators and brands can tag products during live-streams for direct sales. Insta’s also expanding access to Brand Collabs Manager to hook creators up with potential brand partners. We’ll just be here watching the sponcon… and whipping up another Dalgona.
0 Comments