For now, Instagram Reels is nothing more than a billboard for its biggest competitor.

'Reels' is supposed to be Instagram's answer to TikTok, their attempt at claiming a slice of the short-form video pie. Launched earlier this year, it consists of a swipe-up interface, a visible likes and comments count, and a curated feed of videos tailor-made for each user. The resemblance to the most-downloaded and highest-rated app of 2020 is uncanny, and given Instagram's history of stealing competitors' flagship features, its intentions are clear.

With this carbon-copy feature, Instagram is clearly trying to cash in on social media users' affinity for short-form content. Instead, one could argue that what they've created is a recurring billboard for the product they're attempting to take down.

This all comes down to one very simple trick, which is the fact that TikTok watermarks every video that is exported from the app, meaning all of its content that is uploaded to Reels features the TikTok logo as well as credit to the original creator. But just how much TikTok content is on there?

To find out, I did an experiment. I clicked on the Reels tab on the Instagram app before watching the first 100 videos recommended to me, which is the equivalent of scrolling through TikTok's 'For You' page. Of the videos suggested to me, 43% featured the TikTok watermark meaning almost half of all content on Reels is pulled directly from its biggest rival. In addition to this, 13% were originally from Twitter with 1% coming from Reddit which shows that less than half of all content on Reels is made using the Instagram app. This is no surprise to me given Reels' limited functionality and clunky UI, it's currently being used as a resharing tool rather than a creative one.

Battenhall's Drew Benvie says shareable, branded content on social media has long been used as a viral growth technique by the networks:

"TikTok's approach of watermarked content is just a new play on an old trick. In a similar way to how screenshotted tweets fill Instagram, then Instagram Stories drive mainstream media headlines, so do watermarked TikTok videos fill the many corners of the web."

"TikTok's specific approach is an interesting one, however. While branding its videos certainly raises wider awareness of its existence as a network, other social networks have largely opted to make it easier to link to their content's source, driving traffic back to the owner and back to the social network." 

A reason for the varied approaches to the same strategy, Drew believes, could be the friction of setting up on TikTok for the first time visitor: "When you happen upon a link to a viral tweet or Instagram post, setting up and using an account on those social networks is a simple and logical step in the user journey. That's not the case with TikTok, which is less familiar than other social networks. Its complex nature has fostered new kinds of creativity, but its lack of familiarity is not conducive to converting visitors from other social networks. This is why branding its videos has worked so well for TikTok, and why it has been important to do so. This is also why other networks have done well without needing to apply the same approach." 

Indeed, this method of branding is also proving effective in markets such as India where TikTok is currently banned. Some estimate that as many as one in five videos on homegrown alternatives to TikTok bear the aforementioned watermark which is helping TikTok maintain cultural relevancy after being removed from app stores as well as preventing rival brands from carving out a separate identity.

I would argue that Instagram is well aware of Reels' shortcomings, which is reflected in its recent efforts to play catch-up. In the last month alone, we've seen Instagram add more creative tools to Reels in the form of Audio Mix and Voiceover options, both of which already exist on TikTok, as well as add its own 'Reels' watermark to all videos created using the app to ensure Instagram branding is present when they are reshared.

It's true that it's early days, and that in the past it has taken time for new Instagram features to take off and be adopted by the majority of its users. As time goes on and more updates to Reels are rolled out to make it a more competent challenger to TikTok, we'll likely see more and more original content on the tab and less of the rival watermark. Already, it has been reported that 40% of the top 100 brands on Instagram have incorporated Reels into their social media strategy which suggests to me that Reels is definitely worth keeping an eye on.