Facebook offers $35K to Reels creators to curtail Tik Tok

Facebook offers $35K per month based on number of Reels views

Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor

Facebook says it will pay $35,000 per month to Reels creators from a $1 billion war chest to claw back users being poached by rivals, including Tik Tok which has climbed to one billion monthly active global users.

Tik Tok, a short-form video app, has seen a steady growth in users. It still trails the 2.91 billion monthly active users on Facebook, the world’s most popular social network. But Facebook numbers are down from 3.51 billion monthly active users.

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Facebook announced it will roll out Reels to more than 150 countries in short video format for iOS and Android.

The decision comes more than a year after its parent company Meta launched Reels on Instagram and months after it was first made available on Facebook in the US.

New creative and editing tools and monetisation options will be introduced, Facebook said, starting with tests for banner and sticker adds, as part of a major push to make Reels stick.

Popular Reels users can earn up to $35,000 per month based on the number of users who view their videos as part of Facebook’s Reels Play bonus programme, itself part of a $1 billion outlay by Facebook to pay its biggest creators announced in July 2021.

“Reels is already our fastest growing content format by far, and today we’re making it available to everyone on Facebook globally,” Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Facebook, said.

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“We want Reels to be the best place for creators to connect with their community and make a living, so we’re launching new [monetisation] tools too.”

“We’re adding creative tools to Facebook Reels like Remix, and the ability to create a Reel from an existing story.

“We’re also building video clipping tools so that creators who publish live or long-form, recorded videos can test different formats.”

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More visibility and reach

Remix allows users to create a Reel that includes part of another user’s existing Reels.

Facebook has also introduced Reels of up to 60 seconds in length, and the ability to create drafts, plus it is testing video clipping tools to make it easier for users to test in different formats, per reporting by BUSINESSPLUS.

“To give creators more visibility and reach, they can share their Instagram Reels as recommended content on Facebook. We’re also rolling out Reels in Facebook Watch and letting people share public Reels to Stories,” Zuckerberg said.

The tests for overlay ads will be undertaken by Reels users in the US, Canada and Mexico who are part of its in-stream ads programme before being expanded to other countries next month.

Facebook said the tests would start with two formats:

banner ads: that appear as a semi-transparent overlay at the bottom of a Facebook Reel

sticker ads: a static image ad that can be placed by a creator anywhere within their Reel

Testing of Stars

Testing of Stars – where users can buy and send “Stars” to support their favourite users – on Facebook Reels will also commence in the coming weeks.

A number of brand suitability controls including publisher lists, blocklists, inventory filters and delivery reports for banner and sticker ads have also been launched for Reels to give advertisers more control over how their adverts appear.

Facebook has also been testing full-screen and immersive adverts between Facebook Reels since October, and they will be rolled out in the coming months.

The company said it would make Facebook Reels shareable in Stories, the Watch tab, at the top of the news feed, and as suggested content in the feed as well.

Background to Reels

Facebook Reels was first launched in the US in September 2021 and allows creators to share short-form video content on Facebook or cross-post Reels from Instagram to reach a broader audience.

Prior to the latest format Reels was available on Facebook in