Beware, TikTok, Facebook has just enabled ads in the Instagram Reels short videos globally, YahooFinance reports. The ads can be up to 30 seconds long, which is twice as long as a regular “reel” video itself, and will loop between the individual videos a user watches. Initially, the ad functionality was soft-tested in India, Brazil, Germany, and Australia earlier this year, showcasing ads from BMW, Louis Vuitton, Uber, and Netflix.
As a reminder, Reels are Instagram’s, and in extension – Facebook’s, way of monetizing the its brazen clone of the core functionality behind TikTok. Reels was launched in August 2020 as an answer to TikTok’s wild popularity, allowing users to create 15-second multi-clip videos with audio, effects, and new creative tools.