Meta is pausing the program to create reels and pay bonuses to creators who hit certain benchmarks. Originally launched in 2021, the program encourages content creators to create short video content. gave incentives. The shutdown will affect all reel creators on Facebook and US-based creators on Instagram. The Instagram program was only available to US-based creators.
The cancellation of the program, first reported by Business Insider, suggests the platform is trying to hold back on paying creators because of the popularity of short videos. According to reports, Meta will keep his bonus promises for 30 days.
Meta told the publication that the program could be reintroduced in a “targeted” manner as Lille enters new markets. This sounds a bit strange considering the short video product is already available in over 150 countries
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As reported, developers are receiving healthy bonuses as part of this program. Some creators received over $10,000 in bonuses, and some claimed $35,000 in a month. But these creators needed millions of views on their reels, and Meta was happy to donate money to help make the format more popular.
Meta is probably trying to divert advertising dollars, given that short videos are one of his most popular formats on social media these days. Last year, we expanded our overlay advertising experiment to cover creators in over 50 countries and show in-stream ads. With these two ad formats, the company shares 55% of the revenue with creators.
Last year, Mark Zuckerberg said annual reel sales hit his $1 billion mark. But the company hopes the format will bring in more revenue and spend money on its Metaverse efforts.
In an investor call to action for his Q4 2022 results on Meta, Zuckerberg said Reels is still not profitable enough. “The next bottleneck we are focusing on to keep Reels growing is improving monetization efficiency, which is Reels’ revenue per minute. Currently, Reels’ monetization efficiency is Feed So the more Reels grows, the more time it takes to get out of the feed and the more you actually lose, even if the overall system gets more engagement,” he said…
As the company phases out bonuses, creators will need the incentive to post short videos on their Meta platform instead of TikTok or YouTube shorts. Facebook promised to give developers more monetization tools to make money from reels. “This year, our focus is on adapting and improving these short video [monetization] tools. We will continue to expand our testing of ads on Facebook Reels,” Facebook CEO Tom Alison said in a blog post earlier this week.
But the meta is nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to stopping creator bonuses for short videos. Both Snapchat and YouTube Shorts have switched to ad revenue-sharing models rather than injecting money into creators’ funds.