Meta says Reels takes up 20%+ of the time that people spend on Instagram, and says that video, overall, makes up 50% of the time that users spend on Facebook

TechCrunch 2022-04-28 Aisha Malik

Context & Ripple Effects

This is the first hard quantification of a claim Mark Zuckerberg had been making qualitatively since video reached almost half of Facebook time in mid-2021, when he also called Reels the platform's largest engagement-growth contributor. The new disclosure puts a floor under Reels specifically: over 20% of Instagram time spent.

It matters because it converts the TikTok-defense narrative into a measurable share-of-time story — one that later coverage confirms kept compounding, with Instagram reporting 24%+ time-spent growth since Reels launched and Sensor Tower eventually crediting Reels with more than half of all Instagram ads by 2025.

First-order effects

Advertisers get a defined Reels inventory pool inside Instagram for the first time, and Meta's sales teams can price short-form slots against the 20%+ time-share rather than treating Reels as experimental placement.
TikTok's competitive pressure on Meta is now internalized as a product metric: Reels' engagement contribution justifies continued feed reallocation away from static posts.

Second-order effects

As Reels inventory scales toward the ad-share levels Sensor Tower later documents, Meta must close the monetization gap between short-form video and feed ads — pressuring CPMs on both formats during the transition.
Content supply strains show immediately: Vox's analysis found most top-viewed Reels were anonymous or reposted, so Meta leans harder on AI recommendation systems to fill the format with watchable content.

Third-order effects

If the pattern holds, short-form video stops being a feature and becomes the default consumption layer across Meta's apps — the trajectory that later produced Reels' multi-billion-dollar annual run rate and its dominance of Instagram ad load.
Time-spent disclosures like this become the standard currency Meta uses to defend AI-driven ranking investments, tying engagement metrics directly to capital-allocation arguments.

The trend: Short-form video is absorbing an ever-larger share of social platform time and ad spend, with Meta converting a defensive TikTok response into its primary engagement and monetization engine.

Discussion

@munster_gene Gene Munster on x
$FB CFO say Reels is additive to overall engagement and overall engagement in the US remains above where it was before the pandemic.
@kimbenabib Kim Benabib on x
7 years? Mao and Stalin dealt in 5-year plans. I'm not sure investors are going to be this patient. https://twitter.com/...
@politics1com @politics1com on x
I may be in the minority, but I liked @instagram when it was almost entirely photos. I find Reels intrusive, annoying, and just clutters up my feed... https://twitter.com/...
@munster_gene Gene Munster on x
Reels is 20% of time on Instagram which means TikTok is being kept in check.
@munster_gene Gene Munster on x
He added that the expenses of building the metaverse is happening today, and the revenue will come late in the decade. That means margin expansion in . . . . 2030.
@munster_gene Gene Munster on x
Zuckerberg suggested it's going to take 7 plus years to monetize the metaverse. That's about 3 years longer than I was thinking.
@munster_gene Gene Munster on x
Sandberg says Reels is fast growth and they have a multi-year plan to increase monetization. What's holding it up? Advertisers need to build creative optimized for Reels. I believe it because that's how Stories monetization played out.
@shiringhaffary @shiringhaffary on x
On earnings call, Zuck saying Reels now makes up 20% of people's time spent on Instagram. I wrote a story about how FB/Insta is heavily promoting Reels last month: https://www.vox.com/...

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