Facebook begins testing ads on Instagram Reels in India

TikTok popularized the concept of short videos, and while Instagram Reels, the Facebook-flavored clone, remains a close second, it actually enjoys overwhelming success in countries like India, where TikTok has actually been banned by the government. Instagram has over 120 million monthly active users in India, and a big chunk of them are Reels users. Politics aside, it’s time to get to the point and talk about the bad news for which you clicked this article: Facebook will begin testing ads for Instagram Reels in Brazil, Germany, Australia, and India.

Instagram ads can currently be found in a lot of places within the app: on your feed, and while tapping through your stories. Instagram Reels has remained relatively ad-free, at least for now, as Facebook is looking into capitalizing on Reels’ continually-growing popularity, especially in India where the main competitor, TikTok, is not available. Whether they’ll beat TikTok at their own game just like they beat Snapchat with Stories is something we’ll see in another day, but Facebook thinks Reels is growing strong enough for ads to be profitable, according to a new Reuters scoop.

Ads will work just like regular Reels and will be up to 30 seconds long. And just like other Instagram ads, you’ll be able to select the categories where your ad will show up. Facebook has also said they plan on making more features available to Indian users, such as letting users and content creators share Reels on Facebook.

What does this mean to you right now? If you’re in India (or in any of the other markets I mentioned above), you can expect ads to come to Reels within the next few weeks. While this is a test right now, it shouldn’t be much longer until this change rolls out globally.

Ad-less Reels were fun while they lasted.

The post Facebook begins testing ads on Instagram Reels in India appeared first on xda-developers.

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