Short video creators on Instagram and Facebook will soon lose a way to make money on the platforms.
Meta is ending its Reels Play bonus program, which rewards content creators for reaching certain view goals on their videos. Change first reported by Business Insider, will affect creators on Facebook and US creators on Instagram. The company will not offer any new or renewed Reels Play bonus offers, but will honor existing commitments for the next 30 days, according to Business Insider.
“We are evolving our Reels Play bonus testing on Instagram and Facebook as we focus on investing in a suite of monetization solutions to help creators earn consistent revenue,” said Paige Cohen, spokesperson. of Meta. The edge in an email. “We will look at ways to run the program in a more targeted form, for example in potential new markets.”
The Reels bonus program has had its ups and downs since Meta launched it in 2021 in an attempt to compete with TikTok. Initially, creators saw huge payouts – sometimes tens of thousands of dollars. But during 2022, some creators reported that payments had decreased and that it became more and more difficult to earn the same amount in bonuses.
Cohen noted that creators can still make money from things like subscriptions and brand partnerships. Bonus Reels used to be part of Meta over two years, $1 billion pool of money the company promised would go to creators through 2022.
Similar incentives in other companies have also slowly diminished. There was something of a Snapchat gold rush in 2020 when the company announced it would pay $1 million a day for hit content on its TikTok-esque feature, Spotlight. This amount was cut gradually during 2022, and other monetization methods like advertising revenue sharing were presented. YouTube initially offered cash payments to get creators to create content for his TikTok clone, Shorts, but announced he was switching to a revenue share model last fall.
Other companies like TikTok are reorganizing creator funds and encouraging new types of content. The abbreviated video app recently announced an updated fund that only rewards creators who make videos longer than one minute. Monetizing directly from platforms has been a problem: Under the original TikTok fund, some creators reported low earnings even for viral videos.
