Short is sweet for Instagram

META’S REELS-FIRST PIVOT TURNS THE FEED INTO A STAGE FOR ADVERTISING INNOVATION

- GEETIKA SRIVASTAVA

INDIAN USERS RECENTLY opened their Instagram apps to find the Reels tab front and centre, signalling a quiet but significant shift. The platform, known for pastel-toned grids and curated photo diaries, seems to be reimagining itself as a short-video-first entertainment platform. Meta, Instagram’s parent company, is testing this new Reels-first interface in India and South Korea, redefining what the app stands for.

The experiment changes the app’s default behaviour: Stories remain up top, the DM button now sits in the middle of the navigation bar, and Reels have been promoted to the second tab. Users can still swipe between sections, but this subtly signals what Instagram wants to prioritise: attention and watch time.

The reason is simple: Indian brands have embraced Reels with gusto. An excellent example is Zomato, which uses hyper-localised Reelsthat play on trending topics and quirks of everyday life. Its campaigns are shared because they resonate. Similarly, Myntra uses Reels to showcase fashion and nothardsellits products. These brands demonstrate that success in short-form content isn’t about cutting traditional ads down to size; it’s about crafting stories that lend themselves to the platform.