Instagram is now playing on television. Reels, the vertical video feed that makes up half of all the time spent in the app, runs automatically on the big screen like a classic TV channel. Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, announced the expansion of the TV app to Google TV devices in the United States, saying: “We're expanding Instagram for TV to Google TV devices in the U.S. starting today,” according to Social Media Today. The same week, TechCrunch published an overview of apps whose whole focus is a counterweight to exactly this logic.
What is happening on the big screen
Instagram first launched its TV app on Amazon Fire in December 2025, and extended it to Google TV on 25 February 2026. It is aiming at a screen that competitors already dominate. According to Nielsen’s The Gauge for March 2026, YouTube led the distributor ranking with 13.5% of all US television viewing time, ahead of Disney with 10.5%. Netflix finished fourth with 8.2%. Streaming as a whole accounted for 47.6% of television viewing. YouTube gained half a point even in a month when total viewing fell by around 3%.
Mass audience attention is concentrating on the big screen and is steered by a recommendation algorithm. Machine-generated content is flowing into this layer at the same time.
AI content in the main feeds
Cosmos, one of the apps in the TechCrunch overview, opens with the question “Are you the creative type who's sick of the AI slop on Pinterest?”. The app presents itself as a space for inspiration, where the profile shapes the user’s taste instead of a machine selection.
The problem also has academic backing. A study published in the Journal of Marketing Research describes how low-cost AI content clogs recommendation systems and pushes out quality material. “Now there is a flood of relatively low-quality content. Because the quantity is so large, it congests the recommendation systems,” said Tianxin Zou of the Warrington College of Business, one of the authors of the research, according to the University of Florida.
The apps in the overview respond with the opposite focus. Shelf is “private by default because it's not about gaining clout”, according to TechCrunch. The private photo-sharing app Retro was built by two former members of the Instagram team, Nathan Sharp and Ryan Olson. Both build on the taste and trust of a smaller group rather than on reach.
Small apps target Gen Z
Corner, described as “Google Maps but social”, has around 125,000 users who compile lists of favourite places and can keep them private or make them public. Divine, a restart of the former Vine platform, hosts around 500,000 videos from nearly 100,000 original Vine creators and has financial backing from “and Other Stuff”, the non-profit of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Mesh, a tool for managing a personal network of contacts, was bought in 2025 by Automattic, the owner of WordPress.com, when it was still called Clay.
These services target mainly Gen Z, a group that, according to TechCrunch, is “more willing to build their social networks within new spaces compared to people with well-established networks that sit on aging platforms”. Older audiences stay on established platforms, while younger ones move more readily into new, smaller spaces.
Podcasts move onto the television screen
The second direction of departure leads to formats that viewers choose deliberately. Global advertising revenue from podcasts and video podcasts will reach roughly $5 billion in 2026, according to Deloitte, a year-on-year increase of just under 20%. 27% of US consumers watch video podcasts every week, and almost half of podcast viewers watch on connected TV, according to the same report. As of mid-September 2025, Spotify offered video for more than 60% of its most popular shows.
The video podcast thus arrives on the same screen as Reels or YouTube, but with a different mode of attention. It is a longer, author-driven format with the host’s name and a stable audience, rather than an endless algorithmic feed.
European regulation of AI content labelling
The difference between human and machine content is taking on legal form in the EU. The transparency obligations for AI content under Article 50 of the European AI Act apply from 2 August 2026. Providers of generative systems must mark outputs in a machine-readable way as “artificially generated or manipulated”. Deployers must disclose that deepfakes, and AI-generated texts on matters of public interest, are artificially created, unless they have passed editorial review.
The Code of Practice on marking and labelling of AI-generated content is to specify the concrete form of these obligations. The European Commission published the second draft on 3 March 2026 and announces the final version for May to June 2026. The code remains a voluntary tool, so the concrete impact on the major platforms will depend on interpretation and enforcement.
Two logics of attention
The mass audience watches Instagram and YouTube on the television screen, in the form of an algorithmic feed increasingly interwoven with machine-generated content. At the same time, the number of people moving to smaller apps built around taste and privacy, and to longer author-driven formats such as video podcasts, is growing.
For a brand planning a budget to reach an audience, these are two environments with different logics. On one side is mass algorithmic reach on the big screen; on the other, narrower communities with a higher level of trust. The creator economy is therefore dividing according to the kind of attention each format can sustain.
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