Instagram Lowers the Quality of Less Popular Content. Here's What Creators Can Do About It.

An Explanation of Instagram’s Video Playback Quality

Initially reported by The Verge, Instagram head Adam Mosseri was doing an Ask Me Anything (AMA) video event, during which he apparently explained why users might notice that their video content has been downgraded.

You can see a saved clip of the AMA in the Thread below, but in short, Mosseri confirms that the popularity of an Instagram video can ultimately affect its video playback quality. As you might expect, the breakdown favors higher quality for more popular videos and lower quality for less popular content.

Here’s an excerpt from the response above:

“In general, we want to show the highest-quality video we can — with someone watching a story, a Reel, or a photo. But if something isn’t watched for a long time — because the vast majority of views are in the beginning — we will move to a lower quality video.”

Mosseri goes on to clarify that these quality playback decisions aren’t set in stone. If a video starts to get more views, the platform could eventually “re-render” it to a higher quality.

Should you adjust your content strategy?

While the Mosseri's general tone might be concerning for those who view these image quality adjustments as an ethical dilemma, for most content creators, this might ultimately be a minor concern.

However, if you are creating video content for a personal or business account that is just starting out and without a large following, you can probably expect to experience video quality downgrades.

If your brand is focused on high-quality video, this could be notable too, as having footage downgraded from 4K HDR video to some of the lowest qualities could be quite jarring and not a great reflection on your brand.

Instagram video strategy takeaways

Instagram has not revealed any thresholds for followers or viewers for when these quality downgrades might occur, so it might be hard to assume whether or not your channel or content might fall victim to these quality downgrades.

Still, if there’s any takeaway strategy advice here, it might be that if you’re someone looking to create high-end content for your new or small Instagram channel, you might want to expect downgraded playback in the early days.

This might mean that you can hold off on shooting (and exporting) the highest-quality videos to start or that you could simply rely on creating more efficient smartphone-shot content until you reach a larger following.

Once you have a strong following (and notice that your content looks the same quality after you upload it), you can test Instagram with higher quality footage as you naturally create bigger and better content.

For more news covering content creation and tips for improving your video workflows, stay tuned to the OWC blog for more helpful articles.