Facebook and Instagram short-form video creators will soon lose one of their sources of revenue. Reels Play, a bonus program that compensates content creators when their films reach predetermined viewership milestones, is being discontinued by Meta. The modification, which Business Insider initially mentioned, will have an impact on Instagram and Facebook developers in the US. Business Insider reports that the business will honor current promises over the next 30 days but won’t issue any new or renewed Reels Play incentive deals.
A spokesman for Meta, Paige Cohen, told Technology News UK that the company is “changing the test of our Reels Play bonus on Instagram and Facebook as we focus on building in a suite of monetization options to enable creators to earn stable streams of income. We will investigate how to operate the program more specifically, for instance, in prospective new markets.”
When Meta introduced the Reels bonus program in 2021 in an effort to take on TikTok, it had both highs and lows. At first, creators received enormous rewards, often in the tens of thousands of dollars. However, some authors noted that payments had decreased over the course of 2022 and that it had become more challenging to earn the same amount in bonuses. Cohen pointed out that there are still ways for creators to make money, such as through subscriptions and brand alliances. The Reels bonuses were from the two-year, $1 billion fund Meta pledged to distribute to creators through 2022.
