The news: Instagram is bulking up its Instagram for TV app with new content experiences, per The Hollywood Reporter. It’s available on Amazon Fire TV and Google TV and coming Monday to Samsung.

Additions include:

• Experimentation with long-form content and live TV creator experiences.
• Episodic series, which builds off of viewing behaviors within the Instagram mobile app.
• A dedicated location for horizontal videos.
• Reels casting from users’ phones to connected TVs (CTVs).
• Channels organized by interest, such as comedy or sports.
• Instagram Stories on the big screen.

These features suggest Instagram-parent Meta sees its next growth opportunity in capturing engaged viewing behavior, not just more scrolling.

Zooming in: Instagram also started reaching out to creators this week to produce more microdramas, which are one- to three-minute episodic dramas that have blown up in the last year.

“Today a lot of [microdramas] are produced by production houses and that’s cool and there’s going to be a role for that. … For a lot of the short-form content creators who are Instagram-native, it’s a very accessible way to get into telling longer and more episodic stories,” Tessa Lyons, Instagram’s vice president of product, told The Hollywood Reporter.

We expect US microdrama viewership will more than double between 2026 and 2028 to reach 10.8 million. Instagram for TV could expand viewership of the format to the living room.

What it means: If Instagram can support episodic content, serialized viewing, and TV-screen consumption, it moves closer to becoming a full-spectrum video platform spanning:

• Discovery through Reels and ad placements.
• Community through DMs and comments.
• Long-form engagement through serialized content.
• Living-room viewing through the TV screen.

Recommendation for brands: Explore how creator partnerships can evolve past one-off Reels and into episodic formats. As Instagram experiments with long-form content, brands will have opportunities to sponsor recurring creator series and integrate products into deeper storytelling.

If the platform can drive more viewing on CTVs, content may need clearer branding and higher production value that works for lean-back entertainment on larger screens, not just quick-scroll consumption.