Instagram Is Offering Some YouTubers $50,000 to $500,000 to Cross-Post. Everyone Else Still Gets No Ad Share.

Instagram has found one way to pay long-form creators: checks, for a chosen few.

Business Insider's Sydney Bradley and Lucia Moses reported on Thursday, 29 October, that Instagram has offered select creators $50,000 to post long videos to Features, its new horizontal format. Others have been offered six-figure deals, some reaching $500,000, according to people familiar with the deals.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed the program to Business Insider without confirming the figures: "We've been public about the fact that we are funding Features content directly with some creators right now to support them. The details of those deals are confidential."

What the deals ask for

The terms are light. Multiple people told Business Insider the deals do not require exclusivity. One said Instagram is asking creators to post to Instagram any long-form video they publish to YouTube, on the same day.

What isn't known is how the money is paid: per video, per month, or as one flat fee. Tubefilter's James Hale flagged the same gap. Neither Meta nor Business Insider said how many creators have been offered deals.

Reza Izad, a partner at Underscore Talent, which represents Kareem Rahma and Noah Beck, told Business Insider the reach may matter as much as the money: "Every time there's a new feature in these apps that the company's promoting, people will have more opportunity to be seen because there's going to be algorithmic preference to this kind of content."

The benchmark: YouTube's 55%

YouTube pays Partner Program members 55% of net ad revenue on their long-form videos. By Posthype's arithmetic, a creator would need about $91,000 of net ad revenue on YouTube to take home $50,000, and about $909,000 to take home $500,000. Instagram's deals sit on top of whatever the same videos earn on YouTube, because nothing in them, as reported, stops the YouTube upload.

For creators without a deal, nothing has changed since we reported on Features' launch on Monday. Instagram says it is "too early to share a long-term monetization model," and that it is "exploring ways for creators to earn from brands, fans, and Instagram, including performance-based incentives." After creators complained on Threads and Reddit, Instagram head Adam Mosseri posted: "We understand the economics matter a ton, and are exploring multiple options to help long-form creators get paid."

Mosseri has also said why Instagram resists paying per view. On the Colin and Samir podcast, he said pre-roll and mid-roll ads would be "problematic from a user experience perspective," and that Instagram's existing performance program costs Meta more than it makes back. "Creators don't produce a lot more when we pay, compared to what they already create," he said, as quoted by The Verge's Jess Weatherbed.

Instagram has run this play before. Business Insider notes it paid creators for short videos during the 2025 TikTok ban scare, and in 2021 funded long-form shows on IGTV, which later had an ad-revenue program. Instagram ended in-stream video ads, formerly IGTV ads, in 2022.

What this means for creators

If you get an offer, it is close to free money: same video, same day, no exclusivity. Get in writing how payment is triggered, how many uploads count, how long the deal runs, and what happens if Instagram adds ads to Features mid-term.

If you don't, Features is still distribution, not income. Keep YouTube as the place the full episode earns, and use Instagram's Clips as Reels to send viewers there or to sponsors.

For brands, a sponsor read in a funded creator's video now runs on two platforms on the same day. Contracts should say which ones.