Long Form Content for Instagram Creators: Making Room for the 90-Minute Video

Ever see that podcast host who trims 40 seconds from Tuesday's interview and posts it as a Reel? By morning, thousands of strangers have already watched it, and the comments keep asking where the rest is. The host replies that the full episode lives on YouTube, link in bio, and the thread goes quiet. Long form content has met that wall on Instagram for years, since attention arrives in seconds and the work behind it takes an hour.

Instagram recently started testing a way to close that gap. The format is called Features, and it lets selected creators upload horizontal videos that run as long as 90 minutes, with Reels pointing the way in. The experiment is early and unpaid, and it still says a good deal about where the platform is heading.

What Is Long Form Content on Instagram Now?

Long form content is anything that asks a viewer to stay a while. It might include an interview, a workshop, a vlog, or a slow walk through a single idea. Marketers tend to draw the line near five minutes of video or a thousand written words, though the number matters less than the posture of the person watching, who has stopped glancing and started listening.

On Instagram the ceiling has been set by Reels, which stop at 20 minutes and live in a tall vertical frame built for one thumb. Features moves both limits. The new format favors footage shot in landscape, and it plays in the app, in a desktop browser and on a television through Instagram's TV app. When Tessa Lyons, Instagram's vice president of product, announced it alongside Adam Mosseri, she pointed out that many creators already film longer videos and cut them into clips that find new viewers on Reels. She also said Reels remains a core part of the app.

Why Instagram Changed Its Mind

Two years ago, Mosseri told the hosts of The Colin and Samir Show that he had no appetite for long videos. Friends talking to friends sat at the center of the app, he said, and a detour into long viewing might wear that center down. This time he opened with an admission that he had resisted the idea for a long while, and he told the same hosts that Instagram wants to stay culturally relevant by meeting people where they already watch.

Pressure explains part of it. Netflix and Disney have been adding podcasts and creator videos to their libraries, and YouTube has long been the home of hour-long talk, backed by a revenue split that keeps creators loyal. Instagram's own audience supplies another reason. Short videos already travel through DMs and group chats, so a Reel sent to a friend can now work as a recommendation for a full episode, handed over by someone the viewer trusts.

Instagram has also been here before. It launched IGTV in 2018 as a vertical home for longer videos and later closed it. This attempt is different because the frame is horizontal, and it grows out of Reels, where viewers already spend their time, instead of asking them to go somewhere new.

How Features and Linked Reels Work

Instagram long form video arrives in two places at once. Creators in the test upload a horizontal video, and Instagram can recommend it on Explore and in the main feed. They can also post a Reel that links to it, so a viewer who enjoys a clip can tap through to the full conversation without hunting for it. Coverage of Variety's reporting says a single video can take up to eight linked clips.

Linked Reels are the quiet center of the design. Most Reels run three minutes or less, so the clip behaves like a postcard and the full video like the trip it advertises.

Television carries the rest of the plan. Instagram is reshaping its TV app around Features, with versions on Google TV, Fire TV and Samsung sets and Apple TV on the way. Lyons described a viewer who sees a clip on a phone during the day and later gets a prompt on the television asking whether they want to finish it. Two additions are coming:

• Second Screen, which turns a phone into a remote and lets viewers save a video for the couch, and a way to pause on mobile and resume on the big screen.
• Background playback may follow, which would let people listen while using other apps.

Series is a related test, a dedicated place on a creator's profile for episodic Reels, aimed at accounts that publish ongoing shows such as Subway Takes or Brooklyn Coffee Shop. Instagram has been courting microdrama studios in Southeast Asia since June and expects Series in the United States by the end of this year or early next. A separate test puts live video in the Reels tab, starting in Indonesia and Brazil, with the United States slated for next year.

Who can use it today?

‍Access is narrow. Features began with creators in Brazil and has now reached a selected group in the United States, with Instagram aiming for a pool in the tens of thousands. Early names include Emma Grede, who co-founded Skims and hosts a podcast, the beauty and fashion creator Monet McMichael, Preston Rakovsky, who interviews New Yorkers about love, and the football creator Donald De La Haye. Instagram hasn't said how creators are chosen or when everyone else gets in. If your app looks unchanged, your account simply hasn't been picked yet.

Long Form vs Short Form: What Each One Does Best

Think of a short video as a bite at a street stall and a long video as dinner at a table. Nobody picks one forever. The bite finds you while you are walking past, and dinner is where you stay long enough to learn the cook's name.

Short video wins on reach. A Reel takes seconds, travels through the recommendation feed to strangers, and asks almost nothing of the person watching. It's the best tool Instagram has for being discovered.

Long video wins on closeness. Someone who gives you 40 minutes has decided you are worth the time, and that choice shows up later as replies, saves, shares and purchases. Time spent with a creator builds a kind of trust that a stream of quick clips rarely manages alone. Instagram is betting that its audience wants more of that, and that creators who already film long conversations will stop sending them to other apps.

The two formats also fail in different ways. A Reel that misses costs you an afternoon. A 90-minute upload that misses costs you a week, and it may have no captions or chapters to help it along. That's why long form content on Instagram makes the most sense for creators who already have material worth stretching, whether that be a show, a podcast, a workshop, or a habit of talking at length.

Not every creator needs it. If your strength is a sharp 10-second idea, keep making that. The test is simple. Do your followers ever ask for the full version of something you posted? If they do, you have a long video waiting.

Long Form Content Examples Worth Making on Instagram

Of all the types of Instagram content, a few already lean toward length. These five fit the new format best, and each one gives a short clip a natural home:

• Interviews and podcasts. The early names in the test, from founders to hosts who sit people down for a real talk, point at this one. A full conversation feeds a dozen quotable moments.
• Comedy and sketch shows. A long set or a run of connected sketches rewards viewers who stay, and one joke makes a fine Reel that leads them to the rest.
• Vlogs and day-in-the-life films. A travel diary or a studio week lets people live inside your routine for an hour, which a fifteen-second montage never could.
• Workshops and tutorials. Teach the whole skill in one sitting, then pull the single tip that people screenshot. The tip finds new viewers, and the lesson keeps them.
• Episodic series. Treat the video as an episode in something larger. With Series on the way, a recurring show on your profile starts to look like a channel.

How to Earn From Long Form Content Through DMs

An hour of talking leaves a trail of questions. Someone wonders which camera you used, someone else wants the book you quoted, and a third asks where to buy the thing you held up at minute twenty-two. In a short clip, those questions slip past. In long form video content, they pile up, and each one is a person telling you what they would buy.

This is where Linka fits. Linka runs comment-to-DM campaigns that Meta has approved: you ask viewers to comment a keyword, and the matching DM goes out with the link they wanted. Its AI Shopping Agent can learn from your webpages, Reel links, files, voice notes and newsletters, so it answers follow-up questions in your voice instead of sending a stock reply. Products can sit in your Linka Store, and money arrives two ways. Brands can pay for qualified DMs, and you can earn affiliate commissions when a sale comes through.

A composite example. Picture a creator who hosts a weekly cooking podcast and posts the sixty-minute episode as a Feature. Midway through, she praises a carbon steel pan, a cold-pressed olive oil and a chef's knife she has used for ten years. She cuts three Reels, one for each, and each clip ends with a line like "comment PAN and I'll send the one I use." Viewers who comment get a DM with the link and a short note on why she likes it. The ones who ask about seasoning the pan get an answer drawn from her own notes. She spent no extra filming time, and the episode now has three doors to a purchase. This is an illustration, not a result from any real account.

Keep the paperwork clean. If a DM includes an affiliate link or a paid brand mention, say so in plain words at the top. The guide to FTC disclosure in Instagram DMs covers the wording. For the bigger picture, turning Instagram engagement into revenue and affiliate marketing for creators go deeper on the money side.

Disclosure: Linka earns when creators earn through its tools, so we have an interest in this approach. The method works the same way with any tool that does the job.

Let Your Long Form Content Start Conversations

If you want long form content to turn into sales and sponsor revenue, set up comment-to-DM campaigns with Linka and let its AI Shopping Agent handle the questions while you edit the next episode. Creators who want to go further can apply to the Linka Partner Program and earn through brand-paid DMs and affiliate commissions.