Instagram introduces endlessly looping videos to please advertisers

Instagram has tweaked its video settings so that clips automatically replay in users’ streams — a change that will be mainly welcomed by #brands keen to get as many views for their ads as possible. Users can choose to have videos preload on Wi-Fi only to save data, but this is not the default option, and there’s no way to disable autoplaying altogether.

The change also brings Instagram’s video service closer to rival Vine’s. However, while Vine’s 6-second clips are often designed to be looped, Instagram’s 15-second videos generally are not. Facebook-owned Instagram first introduced video ads in October last year, but was criticized for failing to curate these to the same standard it had applied to static ads. Auto-playing might make this difference even more apparent.