If you have power on a social network and want brands and companies to start publishing a certain type of content more than anything else, you just have to get the audience to interact with it en masse. Those responsible for social media marketing strategies live by and for engagement, and if one piece of content shows more response than another, they'll rush to create it en masse.
The best example to understand this is Facebook. When Facebook launched video content—and aimed to overtake YouTube as the destination for uploading it—pages were key to bolstering its strategy. Suddenly, videos were all over the feed, and if you wanted to be successful, you had to launch that content no matter what. The algorithm seemed to reward them, placing them in prominent positions, so much so that a good video could have a very high return (there are all those media pages that abandoned their content and started creating videos for Facebook because that's where the golden age lay). Brands, if they wanted to remain visible and generate engagement, had to create videos, and they all ended up doing so.
Now, Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, is promoting Reels, the videos that serve as the second social network's alternative to TikTok videos and its bid to remain relevant against its attractive—and popular—competitor. And perhaps for that reason, it's no surprise that studies show that Instagram content achieves less engagement than Reels.
Later accounts, to which has had access Insider, show that average engagement data for Instagram posts has plummeted. On average, and compared to 2019, engagement on posts on the social network has fallen by 44%. This statistic includes all content published in post format designed for the feed, i.e., photos, galleries, and even videos, as long as they're not Reels. In contrast, engagement achieved by Reels has skyrocketed, rising by 500% since Instagram began using the format.
These figures could be explained by considering that the content already existed—and Instagram was experiencing a golden age at the time—and that Reels are a comparison that starts from scratch. In other words, it's comparing how users reacted to them when they were new and unfamiliar to them with how they react now that they're popular content.
However, the reality is more complex than that simple explanation. Posts have gone from an average engagement of 5.6% in January 2019 to closing out 2021 with an average of 2.9%. Reels have jumped from the 2% they debuted with in 2020 to an average engagement of 9%.
And, as noted in the study's conclusions, the trend has run parallel to Instagram's own policy, which is giving Reels more visibility—so much so that it has changed its design to make them more visible and discoverable—and has positioned them as a key player. In its meetings with investors, the social media giant emphasizes the power of Reels and their potential as a means of growth.
It's also incentivizing creators to generate more and more Reels. In fact, influencers themselves feel pressure to make the leap to such content, since engagement is the cornerstone of their business, and achieving it is essential to survive.
In fact, Instagram's latest move already suggests that escaping Reels is going to be impossible. All the videos that are go up Videos that are less than 15 minutes long on the social network will now be published as Reels, whether or not that was the intention of their creators (in short, they'll have no other option). Videos published so far will remain on the social network as is, but those uploaded from now on will be published as Reels.
This has implications for brand accounts, but also for people's accounts. As you recall in TechCrunchUnless it's posted privately, anyone can find that Reel and use the original audio to create their own Reel or remix. It will also make posting videos horizontally especially difficult.
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