Meta: Reels make up over 20% of the time users spend on Instagram

Meta announced during their quarterly earnings that their Reels feature, now makes up more than 20% of the time that people spend on Instagram.

The company also noted, that video, overall, makes up 50% of the time users spend on Facebook.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the call that although its short-form video product doesn't monetize as well as Stories do, the company is optimistic about improving that in the future. Zuckerberg pointed to the company's experience with Stories, which first wasn't monetizing as well as the main Instagram feed but improved over time.

Meta expects to see a similar improvement with monetizing Reels over time but noted that it's going to be a long journey.

Zuckerberg outlined that since starting Facebook 18 years ago, the company has seen many shifts in the media types that people use and that short-form video is probably only the latest version, and it's growing quickly.

He outlined that while Meta is seeing an increase in short-form video, it's also seeing a major change in the improvement of AI recommendations driving more of its feeds, for both posts and Reels.

“Being able to accurately recommend content from the whole universe that you don’t follow directly unlocks a large amount of interesting videos and posts that you might have otherwise missed,” Zuckerberg stated.

TikTok's strong recommendation algorithm is one of the reasons behind its incredible popularity, which is why it makes sense for Meta to focus on improving its own recommendation systems.

Meta's comments on Reels monetization come a day after Google revealed that it has started testing ads in Youtube Shorts. Google CEO Sundar Pichai also announced that Youtube Shorts, the platforms TikTok clone, is generating 30 billion views per day, which is four times more than last year.

Meta and Youtubes's short-form video efforts are a direct response to TikTok's success, which has proven to be one of the fastest growing social media platforms in the world, according to recent data.