Reels are a big hit for Instagram, helping to drive engagement for the social media platform.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg touted the success of Reels in the company’s recent earnings call, saying it was contributing to a 24% rise in the amount of time people were using the app.
“Reels continues to grow quickly on both Facebook and Instagram,” Zuckerberg said. “Reels also continue to become more social with people resharing Reels more than 2 billion times every day, doubling over the last six months. Reels are also increasing overall app engagement and we believe that we’re gaining share in short-form video too.
“Our investment in recommendations and ranking systems has driven a lot of the results that we’re seeing today across our discovery engine, Reels, and ads,” he continued. “Along with surfacing content from friends and family, now more than 20% of content in your Facebook and Instagram feeds are recommended by AI from people, groups, or accounts that you don’t follow. Across all of Instagram, that’s about 40% of the content that you see. Since we launched Reels, AI recommendations have driven a more than 24% increase in time spent on Instagram.”
Reels is particularly important for Instagram and Facebook, as the short-form videos compete with TikTok, which is one of the fastest-growing social media app and a significant threat to Meta’s platforms.
Zuckerberg went on to say that AI was helping drive monetization across both Facebook and Instagram.
“Our AI work is also improving monetization,” Zuckerberg added. “Reels monetization efficiency is up over 30% on Instagram and over 40% on Facebook quarter over quarter. Daily revenue from Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns is up 7x in the last six months.”
It’s said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, in which case TikTok should feel quite flattered.
