• by Colin Kirkland , October 28, 2024

In a recent video post, Instagram head Adam Mosseri noted that the social-media platform automatically lowers the quality of videos that are not being watched enough to be considered high-performing on the app -- an indication that lesser-viewed content may lose out over time.

“In general, we want to show the highest quality video we can when someone is watching a Story or Reel,” said Mosseri. “But if something isn't watched for a long time, because the vast majority of views are in the beginning [after initial posting], we will move to a lower quality video.”

Mosseri, who was responding to a user wondering why their older Stories were blurry, added that if a video begins to perform well after its quality has been downgraded, Instagram will “re-render the higher quality video.”

The Instagram boss noted that videos being accessed on a slow internet connection will also be served in a lower-quality format so that it loads more quickly. However, while this tactic has been used for years by other apps serving video content, Mosseri's admission with regard to downgrading lower-performing content is novel.

It works at an aggregate level, not an individual viewer level,” Mosseri clarified. “We bias to higher quality (more CPU intensive encoding and more expensive storage for bigger files) for creators who drive more views. It’s not a binary threshold, but rather a sliding scale.”

Overall, Mosseri's statement means that lesser-viewed content on Instagram may have a more difficult time re-engaging audiences over time due to the reduction in playback quality, while the platform as a whole benefits creators with a larger following.

Brands working with popular creators are not likely to suffer from the platform's video-quality downgrades, but the same cannot be said for advertisers working with smaller niche influencers.

Mosseri added that video-quality may not be a major factor in deciding user engagement, however.

“In practice it doesn't seem to matter much, as the quality shift isn't huge, and whether or not people interact with videos is way more based on the content of the video than the quality,” he said. “Quality seems to be much more important to the original creator, who is more likely to delete the video if it looks poor, than to their viewers.”