What are the key drivers of post reach on Instagram? Do you need to post Shorts in order to get any traction in the app at all? What is today's focus for Instagram in amplifying certain types of posts and creators in the app?

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri has shed light on each of those above factors in a new interview with Colin and Samir that could give you even more direction for your IG strategy, and the way you approach the platform moving forward.

You can check out the full 90-minute interview here, but in this post, we'll take a look at some of the key notes.

To start with, Mosseri talks about video inside the application and the radically transformative nature that video has had when it comes to how humans consume content.

According to Mosseri:

"More than half the amount of time spent on Instagram is video at this point in most countries.". It's not the only thing we do, but we try to do it differently than YouTube and TikTok, where I think it's a bit more of a laid-back, passive experience. We try to create a bit more of a participatory, lean-in experience, where you're going to discover a Reel and then send it to a friend, then talk about it with another friend. Yet still, it is such a big part of what we do, given the sheer volume of demand there still is, and at the end of the day we are a business, and we have to figure out a way to meet demand as demand moves around and shifts.

Not a surprise, though. Meta has been extolling the virtues of video content on its apps for years, and clearly Instagram has made a pivot away from its still-image roots and more into the realm of video content. It's also interesting to see Instagram still trying to emphasize sharing behaviors as it leans more into video consumption, increasingly powered by its AI-based recommendation constructs.

Which is a shift led by TikTok, in that TikTok has moved away from the graph of people who follow you, and toward the content itself. That's opened up new opportunities for social platforms to show people a broader range of content, via systematic "For You" feeds, guided by your in-app behaviors.

But it's fascinating to hear how Mosseri talks up this element:

"There's way more unconnected content-than there is connected content. So you maybe follow, I don't know, a few hundred accounts maybe a few thousand [and] most of them don't post something to feed in a given day. So let's say there's 100 or 200 things you could see in a given day.". There are hundreds of millions of pieces of content that are going up today that are coming from accounts you're not even following, and of those, a few of those might be really exciting to you.
The interesting consideration here is that Meta has spent years telling us we follow too many accounts. That's been the excuse for its ailing News Feed algorithm, because users simply follow too many profiles and Pages, so we could never hope to see all of the updates assigned to us based on our following graph. And so, Meta's been telling us we needed a feed algorithm to rank them, but now, Mosseri is saying, essentially, that people don't follow enough profiles, or the right ones. So it should now show us more things.

Given this, in theory at least, the core concept of the News Feed algorithm is dead, right? Maybe that's because people are now posting less, so there's less stuff in your queue each day, but the old justification is now, seemingly, gone.

So we should have a chronological feed back. Right?

I mean, Meta is drawing a hell of a lot more engagement out of its recommendations, and that's probably enough to keep it in its new "For You" style of approach. Still, as an interesting consideration in the broader calculus here, that's worth pointing out.

Mosseri also spoke to how the algorithm presently ranks content, and what the most important factors are that define post reach.

The key consideration these days? Sends:

"One thing definitely worth taking a peek at, if you're trying to gauge how your videos, or anything's doing on Instagram, is definitely the sends. I would look at sends per reach. So of the people who saw it, how many of them sent it to a friend? Because that tends to be the content that does the best, because it tends to drive the most value for the overall community.".

Sends, Mosseri says, is now more consistent with how people use the app-all around private engagement.

"If you saw some amazing basil planting video, maybe some sort of time lapse right, and you sent that to [a friend], that's an interesting moment because you discovered something that someone made, something creative, something beautiful, something interesting, and then you shared it with a friend.". And then he's all excited about getting it, and then you maybe can even have a conversation on how to garden basil or whatever, but then he went and went back to Instagram and he probably looked up some more things. Maybe he then saw an amazing soccer highlight, then he sent that to me, that's the flywheel, you're discovering something, then you send it on to a friend, you start a conversation, then that helps them discover more things themselves.

Mosseri also suggests that this is why short-form video is more symbiotic with Instagram, as short form content will allow for a greater connection with friends, as opposed to longer form content that has a greater draw for attention and individual focus.

Mosseri may also have shed light on how Instagram is approaching a more "healthy" content ranking, both on IG and Reels.

My hypothesis is that what you share with one friend, or with a group chat, tends to be healthier than something you want the whole world to know about. And not that resharing or reposting are inherently awful, but, you know, I do feel like they tee it up towards, like, 'the whole world needs to know about this horrible thing that happened, or injustice, or is just a little less personal. It's just a little less niche.

What meta seems to want from threads is a healthier version of what Twitter once was, and to help that happen, it is moving to deprioritize some more polarizing discussion topics, including politics, with the view of helping engender more healthy and beneficial engagement.

One of these could be by ranking content based, again, on shares and where you're sharing content to, which is another factor that could play into your broader strategy.

Other ranking factors, Mosseri says, include Likes and Watch Time, but "Shares per Impression" is now the most important factor when it comes to reach, on average.

Again, that fits in with the larger trend in social media toward private sharing, but it's interesting to see how - and why - Instagram is factoring in this element to its equation.

But most of the conversation is around opportunities for creators and how Instagram is working to improve its systems so that creators stay in line with the platform.

Mosseri provides insight into IG's monetization strategy and the difference between longer and shorter-length content, stating that Instagram is looking to focus on smaller creators who have not yet built a reliance on other platforms.

If you are a creator looking to get a better handle on how Instagram is evolving on this front, this is a must-watch (too much to summarize adequately here).

On other elements:

So, Mosseri also mentioned that video views come with the sound off for about half of all views.
Meta is now favoring creators over publishers "because we believe that power is going to continue to shift from institutions to individuals across industries," Mosseri said.
Mosseri further stated that banning TikTok in the United States is "concerning because of more and more platforms being banned in more regions and countries and governments using that stick as a way to push their own agendas.".
Very interesting discussion quite deep about the state of the man in charge of Instagram, and some valuable insight here, while he can't answer every query, some interesting notes that might just change your perspective and the planning.