'Why isn’t Instagram paying us?' Inside Adam Mosseri’s chat with Indian creators

Instagram head Adam Mosseri with Indian creators (Image Source: Adam Mosseri/Instagram)

It was a warm Friday morning. More than 120 creators, both big and small, had come from 15 different cities to gather in a room, all eagerly waiting to meet a highly anticipated guest.

The room was inside Meta's Mumbai office, and the guest was none other than Instagram head Adam Mosseri, who was in India on a whirlwind trip last week.

Mosseri, who regularly conducts an AMA (Ask Me Anything) every Friday on his Instagram account, held an in-person version for the creators gathered in the room.

The questions ranged from how to expand their follower base and grow their reach, retaining audience engagement, the potential of Instagram becoming a search engine for culture, to apprehensions with creator AI agents, and queries over Instagram's new video creation app Edits.

Many creators also expressed interest in creating dance reels with the Instagram chief, who said he had participated in two or three dance reels during his trip.

"I feel like I have the weirdest job in the world. I will have a policy meeting or a CEO roundtable and then there’ll be, like, a dance all of a sudden" Mosseri said.

The monetisation question

Among all the conversations, one question was top of mind for everyone: earning money on the platform.

"Why is Instagram not paying us?" one creator asked Mosseri, prompting the crowd to chime in, "This is from everyone!"

Instagram currently doesn’t share its advertising revenue with creators, unlike rivals such as YouTube. Instead, creators earn through brand collaborations and fan-supported monetisation features like subscriptions and gifts.

That said, Instagram has tested various bonus programmes in select countries, including the United States, Japan and South Korea, in a bid to incentivise people to create engaging content on the platform. Under these programmes, creators can earn money based on the number of Reels plays and photo views they receive during the bonus period.

Mosseri, responding to the question, said the company has been working on these initiatives for over two years but has yet to crack a programme that works for both creators and Instagram, despite spending ‘tens of millions’ of dollars each year.

"For a platform (like Instagram) to pay you, it has to meet three criteria. One, we can't be losing money. Two, the payments should not be embarrassing. And third, the eligibility criteria need to be transparent. You should know what you need to reach to be eligible. It can't just be a lottery, who gets in and who doesn't," the Instagram chief said.

Mosseri mentioned that they haven't been able to meet even the first criteria yet. "What we find is when we pay creators to create content, they do produce more, but only a little bit more. And the incremental content that they create isn't as engaging as the content they have created before"

As a result, Instagram does make a bit more money, but far less than what the company pays out, he said. "Every single time, we found that for every dollar we pay out, we just burn the vast majority of it," Mosseri said.

"For us to scale the programme to 50 million to 100 million creators worldwide, we are talking about billions or tens of billions of dollars. We can't just burn that kind of money," the Instagram head said "I don't need to make money off that programme. I just need to break even and ideally, not write embarrassing cheques"

It's worth noting that Instagram focuses only on short-form content, which has generally been tougher to monetise through advertising than long-form content. The Meta-owned photo and video sharing platform shut down its long-form video app IGTV in 2022 and last year, Mosseri said they plan to stick with short-form videos, as long-form content might “undermine” the platform's “core identity to connect people with friends.”

During the AMA session, Mosseri said they 'haven't given up yet' and that the company still has 'active tests' ongoing. "It's getting better, but it's still losing most of the money that we put into it. Not even including what I pay the engineers to work on it"

"If we get it to work, then we can scale the programme to hundreds of millions or to billions of dollars a year" he said.

India is the biggest user market for Instagram with over 400 million users, according to industry estimates.

Building better search

Mosseri also stated the need to build a much better search functionality, while expressing his desire for the platform to become a place where culture happens.

"I don't think search is very good and we need to make it easier for you to, if you have an interest, go and look for something specific and find it. So, hopefully we'll get better at that over the next year or two" he said.

On growing reach

When asked about how to expand their follower base or reach, Mosseri said that having clarity on the goal that creator intends to achieve, along with constant experimentation, is essential.

“Having more followers or reach is great, but I would really encourage you to think of it as a means to an end, not an end in itself,” he said.

“What are you trying to do with your presence on Instagram? Are you trying to get brand deals? Tell a specific story? Sell a product? Evangelise for a cause? Build a community? Then, experiment with content that aligns with that goal but also resonates with your audience" he added.

Creators will also have to keep adapting, since people's interest may change quickly, and what resonates this month might not work next month, he said.

Mosseri also shared a personal anecdote from about a year ago, when he was losing more followers than he was gaining "I had to rethink my content to find what resonated more, because the content that was working the year before, it stopped working" he said.

A better indicator of how healthy a creator's reach is, rather than follower count, is the number of people they’re reaching in a given day, along with engagement rates such as likes per reach and sends per reach, since those metrics matter more, Mosseri said.