Meta is offering deals to creators to promote Instagram on TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube Shorts
Instagram added a new short-form video feature to the image-focused platform in a direct challenge to TikTok.
Chris Delmas | AFP | Getty Images
Meta is offering deals to creators to promote Instagram on other short-form video apps, including TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube, CNBC has learned.
With the TikTok app not currently available for download from Apple and Google’s app stores in the U.S., Meta is seizing the opportunity to promote Instagram, the crown jewel of its social media empire, to more users.
As part of the deals that Meta is offering, creators must promote Instagram twice a month on other short-form video platforms, including Snapchat, Google’s YouTube Shorts and others, according to details of a contract offered to a creator that was reviewed by CNBC.
The contract also requires three months of posting exclusivity on Instagram’s Reels short-form video product before the creator can post content elsewhere.
These deals last six months and obligate a creator to post a minimum of eight Instagram Reels per month, with at least one more post on Instagram than any other platforms. The creator is also required to share content to their Instagram Story twice a month.
To meet these requirements, the posts cannot be part of a brand deal, which is an agreement where creators are compensated to post content on their account that promotes a brand.
The contract reviewed by CNBC is an example of a mid-tier deal that Meta is offering to creators. The social media company is also offering terms varying in amount of deliverables and compensation based on the size of the audience, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Information on Monday reported that Instagram is offering creators with large TikTok followings cash bonuses ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 per month for a creator to shift their videos to Instagram Reels.
Meta said it has also announced several new features for creators, including a video creation app called Edits, the expansion of Reels to three minutes and a new bonus program for creator monetization.
Creators make these platforms
This push by Instagram underscores the high stakes in the social media landscape, where platforms are vying to capture the attention of millions of users while TikTok’s future hangs in the balance.
TikTok shut down in the U.S. for a few hours last week after the Supreme Court upheld a law that was signed by former President Joe Biden in April. That law forced China-based ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok or face an effective ban of the app in the U.S. on Jan. 19. As a result of the law, Apple and Google also pulled TikTok from its app stores in the U.S.
The app, however, began working again in the U.S. after President Donald Trump said he would delay the ban. Trump followed through on Monday and signed the executive order, which delays enforcement of the ban by 75 days.
In the meantime, U.S. investors from Frank McCourt to Jimmy Donaldson, known as Mr. Beast, have offered to do deals that would bring ownership of TikTok to the U.S. Trump has also expressed interest in billionaire Elon Musk or Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison obtaining partial ownership of the app.
For Meta, paying creators to promote Instagram could be an effective strategy to regain the app’s foothold as the most popular social media platform among teens and young adults after TikTok surpassed it in popularity in recent years.
According to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 63% of teens aged 13 to 17 say they use TikTok compared to 59% who use Instagram.
Many TikTok creators rely on brand deals as a primary way of generating income, with payments often depending on the size of their followings. With TikTok’s future in limbo, brands are pausing or altering their agreements to include competing platforms.
“Advertising has been paused, and it’s causing a lot of anxiety and a lot of lost revenue,” said Dan Weinstein, co-CEO of Underscore Talent, an agency that manages many top internet creators.
Amid the uncertainty, advertisers and creators are in a wait-and-see mode, and brands are diversifying their social media strategies beyond TikTok by incorporating platforms like Instagram and YouTube Shorts into agreements, Weinstein said.
Jumping from one platform to another does not guarantee success for creators. Many who were popular on TikTok can struggle to develop an audience on other apps.
“It’s hard for a lot of creators on TikTok to necessarily make the move to traditional YouTube or traditional Instagram,” says Jacob Wallach, founder & CEO of Social4TheWin, a social media consultancy. “You have YouTube Shorts, you have Instagram Reels. You can repurpose that content onto these platforms, but the algorithm is different.”
Meta isn’t the only company looking to pounce on creators who are looking for new revenue streams.
Substack on Thursday announced a $20 million Creator Accelerator Fund to help creators transfer and grow their paid subscriptions. Substack is a platform that allows writers and creators to publish newsletters and generate revenue for their content through subscriptions.
Some creators are also flocking to other foreign platforms as well.
RedNote, known as Xiaohongshu in China, was the top free app on Apple’s app store last week and has rapidly gained traction among users looking for alternatives amid the uncertainty with TikTok. RedNote offers a platform for video sharing similar to TikTok.
According to a study by Captiv8, 67% of TikTok creators surveyed are considering RedNote as their preferred alternative.
“The real reason why people ran to Xiaohongshu was not because it’s a better platform, by any means, but because it’s almost kind of like a screw you to the U.S. government,” Wallach said.
As other platforms actively court creators in response to TikTok’s uncertain future, the value of these digital influencers becomes ever clearer, Wallach said.
“Creators are the ones who make these platforms. Without them, it’s like having a town square with no entertainment,” Wallach said. “Creators are the reason why all of these platforms are successful.”
Alex Karp, Palantir CEO, joins CNBC’s ‘Squawk on the Street’ on June 5, 2025.
CNBC
Palantir CEO Alex Karp took on a familiar target during the company’s earnings call on Monday: His critics.
“Please turn on the conventional television and see how unhappy those that didn’t invest in us are,” Karp said, after the data analytics company reported better-than-expected third-quarter results. “Enjoy, get some popcorn, they’re crying. We are every day making this company better and we’re doing it for this nation, for allied countries.”
Palantir shares are up 25-fold in the past three years, lifting its market cap to over $490 billion and a forward price-to-earnings ratio of almost 280. The stock slipped in extended trading despite the earnings beat and upbeat guidance.
Karp, who co-founded the company in 2003, said Palantir is “going to go very, very deep on our rightness” because it is “exceedingly good for America.”
The eccentric and outspoken CEO has gained a reputation over the years for his colorful — and oftentimes political — commentary in interviews, shareholder letters and on earnings calls. His essay-like quarterly letters have previously quoted famous philosophers, the New Testament and President Richard Nixon.
In Monday’s letter, Karp quoted 20th-century Irish poet William Butler Yeats and argued for a shared “national experience.” He wrote that rejecting a “shared and defined sense of common culture” poses significant drawbacks.
It’s “that pursuit of something greater, and rejection of a vacant and neutered and hollow pluralism, that will help ensure our continued strength and survival,” he wrote.
On the call, Karp pivoted from a discussion of artificial intelligence adoption to fentanyl overdoses in America, a topic he described as “slightly political.”
“I want people to remember if fentanyl was killing 60,000 Yale grads instead of 60,000 working class people, we would be dropping a nuclear bomb on whoever was sending it from South America,” he said.
Karp also commented on the company’s deals with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Israeli military. Earlier this year, Palantir won a $30 million deal to build ImmigrationOS for ICE, providing data on the identification and deportation of immigrants.
In 2023, Karp had a message for people in the tech industry who have misgivings about his company’s dealings with intelligence agencies and the military.
“You may not agree with that and, bless you, don’t work here,” Karp said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Palantir, which gets more than half its U.S. revenue from the government, also provided tools to Israel after the deadly Oct. 7 attack by militant group Hamas. In recent years, both Karp and the company have undertaken a fiercely pro-Israel stance.
Following the Oct. 7 attack, Palantir took out a full-page ad in The New York Times, saying it “stands with Israel” and held its first board meeting in Tel Aviv, Israel, a few months later. Karp has said the company has lost employees due to his staunch Israel stance, and he expects more to leave.
“We’re on the front line of all adversaries, including vis-à-vis China, we’re on ICE and we’ve supported Israel,” he said on the earnings call. “I don’t know why this is all controversial, but many people find that controversial.”
WATCH: Stocks like Palantir and Mag 7 are not ‘unique’ to the market, says Richard Bernstein
-
Sports2 years agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports3 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Sports3 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment1 year agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024