What actually changed
On October 26 the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, sat down on The Colin & Samir Show and announced a test of horizontal videos up to 90 minutes long. That is the opposite of what he said in 2024, when his line was that if you watch a 20-minute video you end up seeing less from your friends. So what moved him? The television. In the US, the time people spend on YouTube from their phone has stopped growing — almost all of it now comes from the living-room screen, and Instagram wants to be there too.
The catch nobody says out loud
Instagram is not paying for these videos. Not yet. Samir called a possible ad share "nominal." So why would you upload an hour-long video for free? Because the point was never the one video.
One long video is really twenty
Here is the play Colin and Samir spelled out on their own show: you upload the full episode or podcast, you cut short clips that point back to it, and you add up the reach of all of them in the deck you show to sponsors. The long video is the trailer and the proof. The clips are the traffic. You are not selling the views of one piece — you are selling the reach of all of them together.
If you are a brand or creator in Miami
Three things that actually matter. First, don't make long video for the sake of long video: film the real thing once — a class, a Q&A, a client story — and slice it. Second, keep the sale off-platform: Instagram is top-of-funnel, so the booking, the email and the checkout live on something you own. Third, Mosseri's own tip for reaching people who don't follow you yet: what counts most is how many people send your post to someone for every person who sees it. Make things worth sharing in a DM.
