Instagram Is Paying YouTubers $50,000 to $500,000 to Post Long Videos on Features

What is Instagram Features, and is it IGTV again?

Instagram Features is a format for horizontal videos up to 90 minutes long. Adam Mosseri and Tessa Lyons, Instagram's VP of product, announced it in a video on October 26, 2026, The National reported. Instagram tested it with creators in Brazil first. It began rolling out to select creators in the US on October 26, with plans to expand "in the coming months", according to Social Media Today.

Instagram is aiming it at podcasts, vlogs and interviews. A second test, Clips as Reels, lets a creator link up to eight Reels clips to one long video. Those clips point back to the full Feature, and Tubefilter reports Instagram plans to promote them on Explore. Instagram also wants people to watch on TV. TheWrap notes viewers can save Series and Features on mobile to watch later on TV.

Features is similar to IGTV. Instagram launched IGTV in 2018 as a separate app for long video. It never caught on, and Instagram shut it down in 2022, per Social Media Today. The Next Web adds that IGTV also paid creators to make shows. The main difference is placement. Features sits inside the main app, and Reels clips send viewers to it, so nobody has to open a separate app.

IGTV launched in 2018 and shut down in 2022. In January 2025, Meta offered TikTok creators Reels contracts worth $2,500 to $50,000 a month. Features started its US test on October 26, 2026. Business Insider reported the $50,000 to $500,000 YouTuber offers on October 29, 2026.

What are the reported terms of Instagram's YouTuber deals?

The reported terms are a $50,000 floor, a $500,000 top, no exclusivity, and same-day posting. Everything else is unknown. Business Insider reporters Sydney Bradley and Lucia Moses broke the story on October 29, citing people familiar with the deals. Tubefilter and The Next Web relayed it. A Meta spokesperson told Business Insider: "The details of those deals are confidential, but we're excited to see the content going live."

Why do some reports say $2,500 to $50,000 a month?

That range most likely comes from an older Meta deal, not the Features offers. Business Insider reported in January 2025 that Meta offered TikTok creators six-month Reels contracts. Pay ran from $2,500 a month ($15,000 in total) to $50,000 a month ($300,000 in total), with tiers at $5,000, $15,000 and $25,000. Those videos had to stay exclusive to Instagram for three months.

PetaPixel's October 30 story on the Features deals prints the same $2,500 to $50,000 a month range. It doesn't square with the $500,000 top in its own headline, since six months at $50,000 is $300,000. I treat the 2025 tiers as a record of how Meta has paid creators before, and Business Insider's October 2026 figures, $50,000 to $500,000, as the Features numbers.

Does Features pay ad revenue?

No. Instagram has no plan to share ad revenue on Features for now, The Next Web reports. Mosseri called Instagram's existing performance program "ROI negative" for video. Meta told Tubefilter it is "exploring ways for creators to earn from brands, fans, and Instagram" and that it is too early to share a long-term model. On October 28, Mosseri posted: "We understand the economics matter a ton, and are exploring multiple options to help long-form creators get paid."

YouTube, by contrast, pays creators 55% of net revenue from watch page ads on long-form video, per its partner earnings overview. That 55% keeps paying for as long as a video gets views. The Instagram payment is a fixed amount unless Instagram adds a revenue share.

Is $50,000 to $500,000 more than your YouTube videos earn?

For a channel under about 100,000 views per video, yes: even the $50,000 floor beats a full year of YouTube ad revenue at a mid-range RPM. For a channel at 3,000,000 views per video, the floor is under 5% of a year's ads. Because the deal isn't exclusive, you keep the YouTube money too. The only cost is the YouTube views you lose by posting the same video on Instagram the same day.

The table uses one formula: views divided by 1,000, times RPM. It assumes four long uploads a month. The three RPM values are ceilings from our RPM benchmarks page: $1.65 (Virlo's gaming CPM floor times YouTube's 55% share), $7.70 (the tech example on that page) and $22 (Virlo's investing CPM top times 55%). Your real RPM sits in YouTube Studio and is likely lower than a ceiling.

The last two columns show the break-even point. If the $50,000 floor equals 13.5% of your yearly ad revenue, you would need to lose more than 13.5% of your YouTube views for a full year before the deal costs you money. A 1M-view channel earning $369,600 a year in ads at $7.70 would need to lose about $50,000 of it. At 100,000 views per video, the floor is 135% of a year of ads. You could lose every YouTube view for a year and still come out ahead. No real cross-post loses that much.

Three factors make the deal less attractive for bigger channels:

• Nobody has reported the payment schedule. A $50,000 flat fee and $50,000 per video are very different deals, so ask which one it is before you do the math.
• Ads are not your only YouTube income. Sponsors price on YouTube views. If a cross-post trims your launch-week views, your next sponsorship rate can drop with it. The full picture of channel income is in YouTube monetization strategies.
• A YouTube video that ranks keeps earning for years, and a fixed fee does not grow. Any view you lose on day one can also mean fewer recommendations later, though nobody has measured that for Features.

Other platforms paid for creator video this year too. Netflix and Disney paid for creator shows, and they wanted exclusivity, which Instagram doesn't, as Tubefilter points out. The comparison is in Netflix's YouTube creator deals.

What happens to a YouTube video's first day if you cross-post it?

Nobody has measured it yet. Features opened in the US eight days before I wrote this, and no creator or researcher has published a before-and-after on same-day cross-posting.

What has been reported

• Instagram wants the Feature live the same day as the YouTube upload (The Next Web).
• Clips as Reels sends viewers from short clips to the full Feature inside Instagram, and Instagram plans to promote those clips on Explore (Tubefilter).
• Features videos can run up to 90 minutes, so a full episode fits for most creators (Social Media Today).

My reasoning on audience overlap

Every clip Instagram promotes points to Instagram's copy of your video, not YouTube's. A fan who follows you on both apps and watches 60 minutes on Instagram is unlikely to watch the same 60 minutes on YouTube that evening. So the loss depends on overlap. If most of your Instagram followers don't watch you on YouTube, same-day posting reaches new people and costs little. If your Instagram followers are the same people who watch you on YouTube, you split your own launch-day views between two apps.

I'd also expect long, evergreen formats to lose less than timely ones. A podcast episode keeps getting found on YouTube for months. A reaction video gets most of its views in its first days, so a launch-day split costs it more.

Two creators in the US test, as baselines

The Tech Outlook, citing The Hollywood Reporter, named Emma Grede, Monet McMichael, Preston Rakovsky and Donald De La Haye among the first US Features creators. They are testers, and no report says any of them took a paid deal. I pulled the recent YouTube uploads of two of them through the OutlierKit API on November 3, 2026, to record their baseline views.

Deestroying has 6.57M subscribers and a median of about 1.0M views across its last 15 uploads, which ran from 306K to 3.5M. One of those 15, a 1:55:09 7on7 video, runs longer than the 90-minute Features cap. Monet McMichael has 453K subscribers and a median of 97K views on the 14 uploads older than two days, ranging from 76K to 286K. Her weekly vlogs run about an hour, which fits Features as is.

Her newest vlog had 39,000 views at one day old. I can't say whether it went up on Instagram too, and one day is too early to compare with a median. If you run your own test, compare day-7 views on two or three cross-posted videos with the median of your last 15. That comparison shows what cross-posting does to your channel.

Who should take Instagram's offer, and who should pass?

Take it if the offer is large next to your YouTube ad income and your Instagram audience is mostly separate from your YouTube one. Pass, or negotiate the timing, if your launch day drives your channel.

If you say yes, get four things in writing: whether the money is per video, per month or flat; how many uploads it covers; whether same-day posting applies to every upload or only some; and what Instagram can do with clips of your video. None of those has been reported, so you'll only learn them by asking.

Small channels without an offer shouldn't chase this one. The deals go to "select" YouTubers, per Tubefilter. The cheaper move is to use Instagram the way it already works, as a top-of-funnel for YouTube. The playbook for that is in growing a YouTube channel from short-form.

How do you know which videos to cross-post?

Cross-post the videos whose YouTube value is lowest relative to the deal, and keep your strongest topics YouTube-first on launch day. That means knowing which of your formats already beat your channel's usual views, and which topics in your niche are breaking out now.

I built OutlierKit for this. It finds the videos in your niche that got several times their channel's usual views, so you can see which formats carry a launch and which are steady earners. Use it to decide which uploads go to Features the same day, so your next video performs on YouTube.

What should creators watch for next?

• Watch for a Features ad share. Mosseri says Instagram is exploring options, and a real revenue share would change the math more than any one-off fee.
• Watch the wider US rollout. Instagram says Features expands "in the coming months". Wider access means more creators competing for the same slot.
• Watch for creator data. Day-7 numbers on cross-posted videos from a real creator will tell you more than any news report.
• Watch YouTube's Partner Program changes on February 1, 2027. Our RPM benchmarks cover what that means for earnings.

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