• by Colin Kirkland , Yesterday

As Meta moves to prioritize Reels across its flagship social platforms, data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower shows that the majority of ads are now appearing on the vertical short-form video feature.

According to Sensor Tower’s findings, half of all the ads seen on Instagram in 2025 ran on Reels -- up from 35% the previous year.

At 46%, Instagram Reels was responsible for slightly less than half of the entire ad inventory in the U.S., marking a 37% rise from 2024.

On Facebook, 29% of all ads in 2025 ran on Reels globally – another increase compared to 2024. 

Over the past year, Meta has introduced strategic changes to both Instagram and Facebook in order to boost ad revenue and user engagement around Reels, a video feature inspired from the global rise of China-owned video-sharing social platform TikTok. 

In October, Meta announced that video watch time on Instagram was up 20% year-over-year, with Reels making up 50% or more of all time spent on the platform. 

When Instagram hit 3 billion monthly active users, chief Adam Mosseri announced that the platform’s algorithm would begin prioritizing Reels. Mosseri stated that Meta would begin to “reorient the app more around DMs, Reels, and recommendations.”

Instagram officially began testing this major change this past fall, when it began to replace the home tab with its short-form video feature for a small group of users in India.

“If you look at the last few years, almost all of our growth has been driven by DMs, Reels, and recommendations,” Mosseri said in an Instagram video in September.

The tests were built on Instagram's newfound iPad app, which was designed specifically to feature Reels when users open the app's home tab, while Meta is also bringing Reels to TV screens via a partnership with Amazon Fire TV.

To attract more advertisers to the Reels format, Meta continues to release more Reel-specific ad tools such as trending ads, which use AI to curate trending and culturally relevant short-form video inventory for brands running campaigns across Meta’s family of apps. 

As CNBCnotes in its report on Sensor Tower’s findings, the rise of Reels could present monetization issues for Meta, with short-form video generating less revenue from traditional ads on Instagram’s user feed. 

However, Sensor Tower data shows that overall activity across Instagram rises when Reels viewership rises, with daily active users up 2% year-over-year due to increased usage of the short-form video feature.