The notion that a live broadcast might also function as an advertisement is not, strictly speaking, new. Anyone who watched the home-shopping channels of the 1980s — or, for that matter, who has sat through certain morning television programs — could tell you that the line between content and commerce has always been drawn in pencil rather than ink.
But Instagram, the Meta-owned photo and video platform, is now making the arrangement more explicit, allowing creators to "boost" their livestreams as paid advertisements while they are still broadcasting. The feature, announced this week, lets creators pay to have their live videos promoted across Instagram's feed, Stories and Reels formats, with the goal of drawing larger audiences to their broadcasts in real time.
"You can choose to boost a live video right before you go live, or schedule it in advance," the company said in its announcement, helpfully recommending that creators schedule their promotions at least two hours ahead "to help reduce ad delivery delays." (One imagines the disappointment of a creator who discovers, mid-broadcast, that the promotional cavalry is running late.)
The move reflects Instagram's continued effort to make its advertising tools more accessible to the creator class, who might find Meta's formal Ads Manager — with its dashboards and targeting options — somewhat forbidding. Boosting, by contrast, is designed to feel less like buying media and more like pressing a button.
It also positions Instagram squarely within a growing competition for live-video advertising dollars. YouTube has recently adjusted how it serves ads during popular livestreams, and Meta itself expanded live shopping tools globally earlier this year.
The live-streaming market, according to industry projections, is expected to grow from $2.58 billion this year to nearly $6 billion by 2030, propelled by gaming, shopping and the persistent human desire to watch other people do things.
Whether all that watching will also mean buying remains, as it always has, the central question.
Original story published in MediaPost: "Instagram Pushes Live Ads Via New Creator 'Boosts'"