Earlier this year, we explained the origin of video clipping campaigns and how brands can benefit from this growing trend to reach new audiences. Read the post here.
Just as this new distribution method gains steam, though, Instagram announced a change to its recommendation engine that could jeopardize the reach that these campaigns generate.
Below we explain this news, what it means to brands and clippers, and how we see this shaking out in the near term and long term.
Instagram’s Approach To Aggregators
Aggregators on Instagram are accounts that publish repurposed content from other creators and brands. This is essentially what most clippers do. Some aggregators may tweak the content before re-uploading, but the source material was produced by someone else. In some cases, the original creator or copyright holder is unaware of their content being repurposed, and Instagram is likely trying to guard against this.
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, announced that Instagram accounts that mostly share content from others will not be recommended to people who don’t follow the account. This applies to the Reels, photos, and carousels that these accounts upload. View his announcement and other details below.
How Will This Impact Video Clippers?
Clippers distribute content across more platforms than just Instagram. You can see clipped videos on TikTok, X, and YouTube Shorts.
That said, Instagram drives a ton of impressions and video views thanks to the size of its user base and the power of its recommendation engine. If clippers anticipate their earnings being capped on Instagram, expect a few things to happen:
- Lift on other channels: More clippers will focus on distribution across TikTok, X, and YouTube Shorts.
- Fewer clippers: The clipper community may decrease as its earnings ceiling drops.
- Higher rates: Clippers may raise their rates to account for the lower earning potential. Some may move from a performance model to a flat fee model.
- More remixing: To avoid getting their videos flagged as “unoriginal” by Instagram, clippers may produce more remixes. This requires more effort, though, which they will charge brands for.
- More collabs: Collab posts are exempt from Instagram’s new policy since the brand is a co-author. So expect more of these partnerships. These are more difficult to scale, though.
How Will This Impact Brands?
It depends on where your target audience spends the most time online and which countries that audience is located in.
For tech companies who want to reach early adopters on X and YouTube worldwide, Instagram’s new policy may not matter much. But if you’re a tech company that wants to reach that same audience only in the U.S., expect your costs to rise as supply decreases. By “supply,” we mean both in terms of the number of clippers who participate in campaigns and the total impressions that the campaigns can generate.
Also, launching and managing clipping campaigns will become more cumbersome and high-touch if brands want to circumvent Instagram’s “originality” filter by requesting collab posts and video remixes.
That said, CPMs on ad platforms will continue to rise. That’s as predictable as death and taxes. So video clipping campaigns will continue to be an appealing option to brands who want top-of-funnel awareness at a fraction of the cost relative to paid campaigns.
What We Recommend For Brands
In the near term, we don’t anticipate a huge decrease in clippers or a significant rise in costs as clippers evaluate the impact of Instagram’s latest move.
Entering Q4, though, we predict a 15-30% rise in costs for clippers and a longer spend-thru period. In other words, it may take longer to spend budgets as views decrease on Instagram and more budget shifts to platforms like X and YouTube Shorts, which don’t generate the same volume of organic views.
Our advice to brands is to consider video clipping as part of a broader overall video strategy. It would be a mistake to allocate all of your brand budget to video clipping to generate awareness. Also, brands should prioritize platforms where they already have an active organic presence. Lastly, study X, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts to understand which video formats and styles resonate on these platforms compared to Instagram, and then tailor your content strategy accordingly.
If you have additional questions or want our help launching and managing your clipping campaign, email us at [email protected] or click the button below.
