Should Your Brand Go Long in 2027?

Instagram is giving long-form video another go, and I can't help but be taken down memory lane.

Years ago, I was halfway through producing a long-form series for a brand when IGTV was shut down. The series was my creative brainchild, and I was incredibly proud of it.

As a long time fan of long form content, I was SO overjoyed about IGTV so forgive me for the Taylor Swift reference but I remember it all too well 😉

So when Instagram announced its latest investment in longer video, I was interested. I was also thinking about the work that goes into a series before anyone ever gets to watch it, and what happens when the place you intended to publish it changes its mind.

As you map out your content for 2027, I think long form deserves consideration. I am already in pre-production for a He's Good @ Social YouTube channel. Instagram's announcement gives me another potential place to distribute that work, provided the feature becomes available to me and proves useful.

That distinction matters to how much time, money and creative energy I am prepared to commit to Instagram's latest experiment. And it should matter to you too!

My relationship with long form goes back to YouTube

I was deeply obsessed with creators like Connor Franta, Tyler Oakley and Troye Sivan. I bought Tyler Oakley's book. When my final entrepreneurship class in college required a full business plan, I took the non-traditional route and built mine around launching a YouTube channel. Tyler even made it into the plan.

The possibility of building a business around something you created, and an audience that wanted to spend time with you, clearly made an impression.

That interest has stayed with me personally and professionally. I still consume a lot of longer content on YouTube. I have also spent enough time making content for brands to appreciate what a longer format can make possible, and how much work it asks of the people producing it.

What Instagram is testing this time

On October 26, 2026, Instagram head Adam Mosseri and product leader Tessa Lyons introduced a renewed push into longer video. Features, the new format being tested, supports horizontal videos of up to 90 minutes. The test is expanding to selected US creators after testing in Brazil.

A related test, Clips as Reels, lets creators connect up to eight shorter clips to a full video. Someone could encounter an interesting moment in a Reel, then continue into the complete interview or episode. For people already using Instagram to share excerpts from longer work, that is an obvious application.

The television element is also further along than a hypothetical future app. Meta began testing Instagram for TV on Amazon Fire TV in the US in December 2025. By June 2026, it had announced Samsung TV availability and was exploring longer creator videos, episodic series and other formats for television viewing.

Access to Features remains limited. Mosseri's October 27 clarification describes a gradual expansion, and the announcements reviewed for this article establish no general Canadian launch date for early 2027. My own distribution plan will depend on what is actually available to my account.

Instagram has tried long form before

IGTV launched in June 2018 as a destination for longer videos, both within Instagram and through a standalone app. In October 2021, Meta combined IGTV and feed video into Instagram Video. In February 2022, Instagram announced the standalone app's closure and a focus on video inside the main app. Longer uploads continued through changing formats.

There was a monetization experiment in that history too. Instagram announced IGTV advertising revenue sharing tests in May 2020, then announced the end of in-stream video ads, previously called IGTV ads, in February 2022. Both the product and the earning opportunity changed.

Mosseri's reluctance to pursue longer video has also been public. In July 2024, he argued that extended viewing could reduce interaction with friends and the sharing behaviour Instagram wanted to encourage. The October 2026 announcement acknowledges his earlier resistance and presents short clips and longer videos as formats that could support each other.

Meanwhile, Instagram announced that Linked Reels would begin disappearing on October 28, 2026, around fourteen months after their August 2025 rollout. Those links connected one Reel to another. They are separate from the new test connecting clips to a complete Feature.

I will be interested to see how this attempt develops. The history gives me a reason to keep my production plans workable even if Instagram changes the format, its distribution or its priorities again.

The audience opportunity extends beyond Instagram

YouTube already gives us evidence of people choosing longer programming on a television screen. It reported more than 700 million hours of podcasts watched on living room devices in October 2025, up from 400 million hours a year earlier. Those are platform-reported viewing hours, rather than a measure of how attentively every person watched. They still describe substantial use of the format.

Independent US television measurement adds context. Nielsen put YouTube at 15.8 percent of total TV viewing in August 2026. That figure includes YouTube's different formats, so it cannot tell us how much viewing belonged specifically to long form. It does show the service's place in the living room.

Netflix has made its own strategic commitment. Spotify announced a partnership in October 2025 to bring selected video podcasts to Netflix in early 2026. By July, Netflix's catalogue guide included shows from Spotify, Barstool and iHeart alongside its original podcasts. iHeart also announced an expansion of its Netflix slate during the year.

Podcasting has a much longer distribution history than its relationship with social feeds. Apple added podcast subscription and listening support to iTunes in 2005. What interests me now is the range of places a full conversation or creator-led show can appear, including alongside films and television series in a streaming service.

These agreements show companies committing resources to the format. They do not establish the return a local brand should expect from producing its own show. Established hosts and publishers bring audiences and catalogues that a new series still needs to build.

There is Canadian audience evidence to consider too. Signal Hill Insights, discussing its 2025 Canadian Podcast Listener findings in guidance for 2026, reports that YouTube is the platform used most often by 40 percent of monthly podcast users. It also reports that 76 percent spend at least some podcast time with audio only.

That matters when you decide what to make. A conversation may work as both video and audio. A demonstration might depend on seeing the technique. The format should make sense for how the audience wants to use it.

Creators need an answer about getting paid

The question I keep coming back to is how the people making these videos are supposed to earn from them.

Instagram has offered ways to make money, including Subscriptions and Gifts, and it has tested direct creator payments. Subscriptions and Gifts involve money from the audience. Brand partnerships involve money from a business. A payment funded by Instagram is another arrangement again. The distinction matters when someone says a channel pays creators.

For Features, there is still no announced, broadly accessible and settled payment model that a creator can build a budget around. Reporting says Instagram is directly funding some creators during the test. A selected deal does not tell everyone else what they could qualify for or earn.

In his October 27 follow-up, Mosseri said Instagram understands that the economics matter and is exploring ways for longer video creators to get paid. The clarification did not publish rates or an eligibility framework. I do not find that a particularly convincing answer for someone deciding whether to invest substantial production time.

He has also offered a public explanation of Instagram's position. In his Colin and Samir interview, as reported by Net Influencer, Mosseri described its small performance-payment program as loss-making and questioned whether paying creators generates enough additional consumption to justify the cost. That is his account of the business problem.

I can understand why he is looking at the numbers and still want a clearer proposition for the people doing the work. Researching, recording and editing longer videos costs something. Asking creators to help establish a format while the earning model remains unresolved is a considerable request.

Neither of us is running Instagram. We can still ask what value creators are expected to receive, how access will work and what the company is prepared to commit to. You can count on me to keep asking those questions.

YouTube and TikTok have conditions too

YouTube has a published revenue-sharing mechanism. Its documentation specifies that partners who accept the relevant module receive 55 percent of net watch-page advertising revenue. The YouTube Partner Program is available in Canada, although joining requires meeting eligibility requirements and passing review. It offers a mechanism for earning, without guaranteeing a living.

There is an important change for a 2027 plan. From February 1, new applicants seeking ads and Premium revenue sharing will need 1,000 subscribers plus either 8,000 qualified watch hours over 365 days or 20 million qualified Shorts views over ninety days. Already enrolled creators are exempt from that entry change. Earlier access to fan funding has separate requirements.

TikTok already accommodates ten-minute videos and beyond; its own guidance describes uploads of one to sixty minutes. The relevant payment comparison is now the Creator Rewards Program, which replaced the Creator Fund.

Creator Rewards has personal-account and regional eligibility requirements. A brand's business account should not assume it qualifies, and Canadian readers should confirm availability before including those payments in a financial plan.

My preference is to compare the actual earning arrangements, their availability and what a creator needs to do to qualify. Claims that one channel will make everybody more money flatten several different businesses into a single comparison.

The first use I would recommend for Instagram Features

If you are already producing a podcast, a YouTube series or other longer videos, I think you have the most obvious initial use for Features. Assess an additional Instagram edition when you get access.

You already have a reason to make the work and somewhere to publish it. Instagram could help it reach another audience. That reduces how much of your creative investment depends on this particular feature continuing to exist.

There will still be work involved. The video may need different packaging, captions or framing, and the excerpts need to make sense on their own. Include that time in the decision. Reusing a recording can be efficient, but producing useful versions takes effort.

For someone starting from scratch, I would develop the idea, the intended audience and the production process first. Choose a publishing home you can use now. Then assess how additional outlets could support the work as they become available.

Decide what longer content would do for your brand

A longer format becomes useful when there is something worth developing. A New Brunswick maker might show how a product moves from raw material to finished work. A tourism operator might explore the people and stories behind a place. A consultant might explain a difficult decision with enough detail for someone to understand the reasoning. These are possible concepts to test.

Before you commit, work through four questions:

• Who would choose to spend time with this? Identify the people you want to reach and the subject they would find useful or enjoyable.

• Can the idea sustain several worthwhile episodes? Outline a few distinct pieces before committing to a permanent series.

• Can you afford the whole process? Budget preparation, production, editing, packaging, distribution and audience response, including your own hours.

• What would make the investment worthwhile? Decide whether you are trying to demonstrate expertise, build a returning audience, attract relevant enquiries or achieve another specific goal.

A small pilot can help answer the practical questions. My recommendation is to try three episodes over roughly ninety days, within a time and spending limit you set beforehand. That gives you production experience and early audience feedback. It will rarely settle the entire long-term business case.

Look at minutes watched alongside the proportion of each video people complete. Wistia's 2026 analysis of its hosted videos finds that shorter pieces generally retain a greater percentage of their runtime, while a longer piece can still accumulate more viewing time. Those findings are specific to its video environment, rather than an Instagram benchmark.

Where the measures are available, examine returning viewers, meaningful responses and relevant enquiries too. Keep the results beside the time and money involved. For a local business, a modest audience of people who could become customers may support a very different production budget from a broad entertainment audience.

Where I am placing my own investment

My expectation for 2027 is that we will see more attempts to connect short discovery clips with complete episodes, and more creator programming designed for television viewing. Instagram's tests, YouTube's viewing figures and Netflix's agreements give me reasons to expect that. It remains an interpretation of the evidence, rather than a guarantee about where your audience will go.

I am planning and producing for the HG@S YouTube channel now. The college business plan apparently had staying power. I want room to develop my ideas, share my perspective and make something people might choose to come back to.

Instagram could become part of how I distribute that content. Its role will depend on access, audience response, the work required and whether the value makes sense. YouTube is the primary home I am building around, and I will keep the original material and make it easy for interested people to find HG@S beyond a single app.

Consider long form in your own 2027 plan if you have a worthwhile idea and the capacity to make it well. Give yourself a way to learn whether the audience wants more. The length of the video should serve that idea, and each channel should have a purpose in getting it to people.

I would like the next series I am proud of to have a life that can continue when an app changes its mind.