Instagram is experimenting with IGTV monetization, which isn’t already a thing for some reason

Get ready, IGTV creators, because your turn to make some cash is coming.

Almost two years ago, Instagram launched IGTV to compete with YouTube. If you’d assumed at any point that creators could monetize their IGTV videos with ads (a central feature of YouTube), you were wrong.

The good news is that might change in the near-ish future. TechCrunch reported that Instagram is messing around with the idea of enabling ad monetization for IGTV videos, originally based on a tip from Jane Manchun Wong. 

If that wasn’t enough, Instagram head honcho Adam Mosseri confirmed that Instagram was “exploring” the idea on Twitter early Friday morning. 

Given how much of Instagram is made up of influencer sponcon, it’s a little surprising that it took this long for IGTV to potentially get ad monetization. Google made $15 billion off YouTube ads alone last year, and while you certainly shouldn’t expect Facebook to replicate that anytime soon, it seems like it should be easy money.

But in Mosseri’s tweet, he pointed out that Instagram wanted to make sure people actually used IGTV before letting people make money off of it. That seems to have been a problem with the long-form video app in its first two years on the digital landscape. Despite Instagram’s efforts to fill your news feed and Explore page with IGTV content, it hasn’t caught on yet.

Just a few weeks ago, Instagram removed the IGTV button from the app’s home page. That combined with floundering download numbers for the standalone IGTV app didn’t paint a rosy picture for the feature’s long-term prospects. That said, if people can start getting paper from their IGTV videos soon, that could give it a boost.