Instagram retires IGTV in favor of Instagram Video

If, like many artists, you’ve been promoting your music via IGTV, and were less than thrilled with this particular Instagram feature, you may be pleased to no that IG is dropping the brand and merging it’s content into a more general “Instagram Video” section.

Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0

If your audience is on Instagram and your way to reach them has been through videos, then you’ve no doubt used the platform’s IGTV. You’ve also probably felt that IGTV was a bit clunky in the grand scheme of the Instagram experience, as it was marketed as a separate brand from Instagram. The platform has announced that it’s now streamlined things by dropping the IGTV brand completely and merging it into a more general “Instagram Video” section.

As explained by the company, “Starting today, we’re combining IGTV and feed videos into one format – Instagram Video. We’re also introducing a new Video tab on your profile, where this combined video format will live, to make it easier for people to discover new video content. We love that our creator community has embraced video as a key format to tell their stories, entertain, and connect with their audiences, and that’s why we want to make it even simpler to create and discover videos on Instagram.”

What that means is IGTV and feed videos can now be found in the same place. This doesn’t change the way you upload videos, as that still happens from the camera roll by clicking on the + sign in the top right corner of the Instagram home page and selecting Post.

But there’s more – the platform is also introducing some new features that users have been asking for, like trimming, filters, and people and location tagging. The company is also merging feed post insights and video insights into one combined metric for both businesses and creators.

If you happen to use Instagram ads, IGTV Ads are now called Instagram In-Stream video ads. Says the service, “Eligible creators can still monetize their long-form content, and brands can reach audiences engaging with long-form video. For businesses interested in boosting their videos to reach more people, videos must be no longer than 60 seconds in length.”

This is an improvement that’s long overdue. It’s always better to have as much info consolidated into one place to make for a better user experience. The problem is always how to do that without the UI seeming cluttered, but it looks like Instagram has found a way to do it.