Had A Eye Viewed Next To The Eye, Reels Is Now A Source Of Cuan For Meta

Reels is a new source of money for Meta. (Photo:

JAKARTA - Reels, a Meta-made platform that was the answer to TikTok's viral short video app, was initially underestimated when it launched in 2020. It is even considered another example of Meta in imitating popular competitors.

However, on Wednesday, July 26, Meta revealed figures showing that Reels videos are growing rapidly, both among users and advertisers. In fact, it is quickly pursuing the TikTok app owned by ByteDance which is very popular with young users and has changed the social media landscape.

Meta says Reels' rapid growth, which can be seen on Facebook and Instagram, is partly due to the company's improved recommendation software, which has been the advantage of the Chinese competitor.

"We can feature Reels which we find interesting to you based on our discovery machines," Justin Ososky, Meta's head of online sales, operations and partnership, said in an interview on Thursday, July 27.

The number of Reels video playback on Facebook and Instagram now stands at more than 200 billion per day, up from 140 billion in the fall of last year. TikTok has not responded immediately to their daily figures.

"The Reels growth creates a base that gives you the opportunity to monetize more," Osofsky said.

"Although Meta has invested in artificial intelligence for years, now the company makes it a major thing in its business to increase content recommendations and advertising across company services," he added.

"Reels' annual revenue jumped to $10 billion, up from around $3 billion in the fall of last year and $1 billion in the summer last year," said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, during a telephone conference with analysts following the company's second-quarter results.

That is, Reels' business size was almost comparable to TikTok last year, when TikTok managed to achieve ad revenue of 9.9 billion US dollars (Rp148.6 trillion) globally, according to estimates from research firm Insider Intelligence projecting global advertising revenue of 13.2 billion US dollars (Rp198 trillion) this year.

"One of the reasons Reels' growth is the Meta advertising platform that allows advertisers to easily put their promotions on the feature," said master analyst Aho Williamson on Insider Intelligence. "Only by checking the box, ads can appear on Reels."

"More than three-quarters of Meta advertisers put ads on Reels," said Susan Li, Meta's chief financial officer.

Throughout 2022, Meta executives have often been asked by investors about whether fast consumption of Reels actually harms advertising sales by diverting users' time from high income areas in its apps, such as the News Feed.

At the time, ads in Reels were relatively few, but Zuckerberg said he expected advertisers to embrace the format over time, as they had done with previous transitions from desktop to mobile devices and from Feed to Stories, Meta's Snapchat-like format.

In a earnings call on Wednesday, Li said the company expects Reels to continue making less money than Meta's ads from Stories and Feed features, "because people are slower in scrolling video content."

Even so, TikTok and its content recommendation algorithm remain leaders in terms of time spent by users on social media apps. The average US user spends 53.8 minutes per day on TikTok, compared to 48.7 minutes on YouTube, 33.1 minutes on Instagram, and 30.9 minutes on Facebook, according to Insider Intelligence estimates.