IGTV is bound to fall — Well, maybe.
In contrast to my latest post about the uprising video content star Instagram TV, I thought it would be a challenging fun to write a rant about „Why IGTV won’t make it until 2020“
I kept this idea floating in the back of my head for several days as I wanted it to evolve a bit before speaking out loud. I waited and pondered about arguments that could be valuable and good to stand up for. A challenge against myself and my own beliefs. Then I failed.
Why did I fail?
Because IGTV is still too fresh and feels some kind of an open BETA to me.
Predicting it’s failure at that early stage wouldn‘t even increase my credibility at all. And even if this former statements was very positive:
Who needs Youtube or classic TV anymore when you can have the latest news on InstagramTV?
I would not use it again.
What does the public say?
I went to search for people’s thoughts on IGTV as it was launched already several weeks ago. And guess what? There are shitloads of opinions to find. People wrote articles for a SEO reason, authors expressed their excitement and some just grilled it to the bone. Even Vaynermedia launched an article on medium that metamorphosed into kind of a clickbait as it’s leaving the reader literally with no classification of IGTV itself.
Their conclusion: Don´t judge before you touch. And so is mine approach.
What´s the status quo?
A often criticized aspect of Instagram TV is the yet missing “opportunity for creators to monetize their content”. (most used bullshit-bingo phrase of the year!) To everyone in an e-commerce job it´s not a secret: Creators go where cash is promised. And we, the business guys follow them in hope for grasping a piece of the cake. Let´s relegate to a typical Gary Vee statement:
“Be where the people are”
Having this fact in mind, it is interesting to hear IG’s executive Jackson Williams, who made some vague indications in June 2018 at the VideoCon upon the issue of monetization. He tried hard to spread the tale of IGTV as beeing an open box experiment which was launched without limiting business requirements.
Nice words that fit to an entrepreneurial approach of try & error. But knowing that 53% of all Fortune Top 500 businesses operate an account at Instagram it is not very likely that IG’s executive board had a philanthropic thing in mind.
Does anyone remember Vero?
Their marketeers targeted users with the promise of not being exposed to 24/7 marketing within the app at all. Vero vanished within months.
Why should IG with a bucket full of more than 25 Million business accounts not introduce a solution for creators to harvest an income out of brands? And why should IG not allow businesses to pay for reach? If someone can answer that, I´d be glad to hear about it!
A decision up on IGTV’s financial safety net is expected until the end of the year 2018. Afterwards it’s “new born” bonus begins to expire. Let’s see where this journey might take us.
But meanwhile, we can have a lot of fun there and seek for creative input. Let’s discover cool brands and ideas and maybe spread the word about the greatness of opening a shop with Spreadshop.
A first step into the “being your own boss“ adventure!
