CANNES DAY 2: Instagram vs. YouTube: The Battle for the Living Room

**Colin** (0:00)
What's up everyone, welcome back to The Colin and Samir Show. It is Tuesday, June 23rd, and we are sitting here in Cannes.

**Samir** (0:08)
We are literally outside. It is hot. I'm sure you can hear the trucks going by. We are in the wild.

**Colin** (0:13)
So we're hosting our show, The Daily Brief, every day here at Cannes Lions in partnership with Linkedin. And today, we're going to be talking about some news that broke yesterday. Instagram, launching horizontal video on TVs. We're going to talk about if that matters.

**Samir** (0:27)
Do you care? Does it matter?

**Colin** (0:29)
And in the rest of the episode, we talk about the future of work. What does it mean for young people entering the workforce? What are your opportunities? If you want to listen to that part of the episode, head over to Linkedin. The full episode is there. Let's get into Instagram launching horizontal video on TVs.

**Samir** (0:49)
The word of Cannes this year, technically it's two words, agentic layer. Everything can have an agentic layer.

**Colin** (0:58)
Yeah, I feel like agentic is the word. I didn't hear a layer.

**Samir** (1:01)
No, I heard layer, Samir.

**Colin** (1:02)
What is that?

**Samir** (1:03)
Layer, like I said yesterday.

**Colin** (1:04)
Like the underbelly?

**Samir** (1:05)
On top of anything, you can layer on.

**Colin** (1:07)
Oh, layer on. I thought you meant like somebody goes to their agentic layer.

**Samir** (1:10)
Which does speak to the future of work. No matter what you are doing, you can use an agent, an AI agent, to help you with some of your work.

**Colin** (1:18)
But I think what was interesting is yesterday on the show, both Anthpo and Kendall Tucker from Ramp. When we talk about the future of marketing, it's actually extremely dependent on an individual creative.
Anthpo is an individual creative who has incredible ideas, like very Internet native, chronically online, knows how to tap into communities. Kendall talked about how Ramp's strategy of doing just like massive stunts is just about finding an individual who has an idea and giving them the credit.

**Samir** (1:50)
Creative cannot be done by committee.

**Colin** (1:52)
Yeah, I love that.

**Samir** (1:52)
And I think that fits with what we were talking about yesterday as well. The reactionary advertising is so important. Your ability to be quick, to be nimble. And it's really hard to be quick and nimble when you have a committee of people trying to make a decision.

**Colin** (2:05)
Yeah.
So let's talk about the news from yesterday. This is not news necessarily from Cannes, but it was news that came out yesterday. And it's just an expansion of something that was already announced, which is Instagram on TV. The difference is Instagram is rolling out to more TVs, including Samsung TVs. But one of the biggest things that they announced yesterday was a horizontal video hub.
And I find that to be really interesting. There was also a post that was done by Rachel Carton, who writes a great newsletter called Linkin Bio, where she showed that there's a J. Crew ad that was posted both vertically and horizontally on Instagram. The horizontal one did better. But now, when we look at Instagram on TV with a horizontal video hub, what do you think they're trying to do and do you think it's going to work?

**Samir** (2:54)
Well, number one, I think YouTube has already proved that audiences want to watch and will watch UGC or creator content on their sofas. They'll watch long form on their sofas on their TVs. So they've already proven that behavior that we want to do that.
And then from an advertising perspective, there's a lot of opportunity to deliver ads to an audience like that, where there are multiple people in a room. They're sitting there for long periods of time. You can do pre-rolls, mid-rolls. There's a lot of dollar opportunity there as well. So I think it's pretty clear why they're trying to do it. Audiences are there, dollars are there.

**Colin** (3:32)
I would just say this. Of course, we've been YouTube guys through and through for a really long time, but I think Instagram has a cultural appeal that is very different than every other app. I really do think that the vibe of being an Instagram creator or being popular on Instagram is incredibly different than being popular on any other app. Like it has a higher cache.
Do you think that or no?

**Samir** (3:56)
Well, I think you're saying that. I actually agree. I think that's because the barrier to entry for Instagram has been so low for so long, where you could be a celebrity and you can take part in Instagram culture still to this day by just posting a photo or a carousel. That is still a way to contribute to the conversation in a real way, whereas YouTube, the requirement, is a little bit heavier. People don't think of YouTube and think, oh, I can just post my photos there and make an impact. So because of that, you have celebrities who've been on Instagram for a long period of time.