Meta today expanded Instagram for TV to Samsung Smart TVs across the United States and announced a set of new features designed to make watching Reels a shared, living-room activity - marking the most significant step yet in its push to bring social video to the biggest screen in the home.

The rollout means that, as of June 22, 2026, Instagram for TV is now available on Samsung Smart TVs in the US, including models from the 2020 model year and newer. Combined with the Amazon Fire TV availability that launched in December 2025 and the expansion to Google TV devices announced on February 24, 2026, Meta says Instagram is now reachable across the majority of connected TV devices in the US. According to Meta, those three ecosystems - Samsung, Amazon Fire TV, and Google TV - together cover most of the connected television hardware currently in American living rooms.

The Samsung expansion did not arrive quietly. It came alongside a cluster of new features and a set of emerging formats that hint at how Instagram is thinking about television as a platform distinct from the mobile app - one where communal viewing, longer attention spans, and shared discovery change what the product should do.

From mobile test to multi-platform rollout

The road to today's announcement began on December 16, 2025, when Meta first started testing Instagram for TV on Amazon Fire TV devices in the US. That initial rollout was explicitly framed as an early test, limited in scope. The core idea was straightforward: install the Instagram app on a Fire TV device, sign in with an existing account, and browse Reels grouped into interest-based channels covering music, sports, travel, and trending moments. Users could add up to five accounts on a single device, allowing different household members to each get a personalized feed. According to Meta, the app supports auto-play with full sound, so content runs continuously without requiring a viewer to scroll - a lean-back experience modeled more on television than on a social feed.

The Google TV expansion followed on February 24, 2026, broadening access without fundamentally changing the product. Today's Samsung integration is different in scale and in the new capabilities that accompany it. According to Meta, the Samsung rollout covers 2020 model year TVs and newer, which encompasses a substantial portion of the installed base. Samsung's smart TV platform has, by some measures, a significant footprint: Samsung Ads and Publica's partnership, renewed in September 2025, covers 88 million monthly active users on Samsung TV Plus globally.

That context matters. Instagram is not arriving on Samsung devices as a marginal experiment. It is entering an ecosystem where advertising infrastructure, addressability, and audience scale are already well-developed - and where the competition for living-room attention is already fierce.

New features: casting, channels, stories, and horizontal video

The features announced today go further than anything in the December 2025 or February 2026 rollouts. According to Meta, they fall into two categories: capabilities being tested now, and formats being explored for future rollout.

On the testing side, casting is the most immediately practical addition. Users can now send Reels directly from the Instagram mobile app to a TV with just a few taps. According to Meta, casting is available today on Google TV and Fire TV, and it includes videos from the user's Saved tab - meaning content saved on mobile can be surfaced on television without manual searching. The ability to cast from Saved is a detail worth noting: it suggests Meta wants the phone to function as a discovery and curation device, with the TV as the display surface.

Interest-based channels are also being tested. Rather than presenting a single undifferentiated Reels feed, the feature organizes content around categories - comedy, sports, and individual creators among them. According to Meta, the aim is to make it easier for groups of people watching together to find videos that work for the whole room, without arguing over what to watch. The framing of this feature as a social-coordination tool - reducing friction in group viewing - is consistent with the broader positioning of the product.

Stories on the big screen is another feature in testing. The addition brings the ephemeral, creator-to-audience format of Instagram Stories into the television environment, allowing viewers to catch up on what friends and creators are posting without crowding around a phone. This is technically a meaningful extension: Stories are typically consumed in a quick, vertical scroll on mobile. Adapting them for a lean-back TV context requires both a design shift and a content-standards judgment about what works on a larger shared screen.

Horizontal video is a fourth feature being tested, and the framing here is notable. According to Meta, the company heard from viewers who wanted a dedicated home for horizontal content - the landscape format native to traditional television rather than the vertical 9:16 format that Reels typically uses. The addition creates a display pathway for content that was previously at odds with Instagram's default orientation. For creators, this opens a new surface: horizontal videos can now reach audiences who are watching on a TV rather than a phone, with aspect ratio no longer a barrier.

Longer formats and live TV: what Meta is exploring

Beyond the features being tested today, Meta disclosed three formats it is actively exploring and aims to roll out soon. These represent a more significant shift in what Instagram for TV could eventually become.

Longer-form creator content is the first. According to Meta, this format would enable creators to tell deeper stories and build stronger connections with audiences through extended video, going beyond the brief clips that have defined Reels. The phrasing is deliberately vague - Meta does not specify a duration threshold - but the direction is clear. Instagram has historically been a short-form platform. Longer video on the TV surface would put it into more direct competition with YouTube, which has been systematically building its television audience for years. YouTube Shorts is now watched for 2 billion hours every month on television screens, according to YouTube's own data, and the platform has invested heavily in making the living room a first-class environment.

Episodic series is the second emerging format. According to Meta, this would involve content that unfolds across multiple episodes, building on viewing behaviors already seen on the Instagram mobile app. The concept draws on something Instagram says it has already observed: users returning to follow creator-led narrative content in installments. Taking that behavior and designing a dedicated TV experience around it is a different product bet than simply porting a Reels feed to a bigger screen.

Live on TV is the third. According to Meta, this would bring live creator experiences to the television and create new opportunities for viewers to watch and participate together in real time. Live streaming on Instagram has existed since 2016, but it has always been a mobile-native format. Live on TV would mean that a creator's live broadcast could appear on a household's television set, with whatever interactive features Meta chooses to carry across to that surface.

Taken together, these three formats suggest a product trajectory that goes well beyond a Reels viewer for the couch. Episodic content and live programming are the building blocks of what the television industry understands as a schedule. Meta is not calling it that, and the company is careful to say these are things being explored rather than features with confirmed release dates. But the direction of travel is notable.

Creators at the center

According to Meta, creators are central to shaping what Instagram for TV becomes. The company says it is working closely with creators to understand what works best on the TV environment and how longer-form, episodic, and live experiences can complement the ways people already use Instagram on mobile. This is not just positioning. The emergence of episodic series as a format depends on creators being willing to produce content designed for multi-episode arcs on a new surface. Live on TV requires creators to understand a different audience dynamic - a living room audience that may be watching on a 65-inch screen rather than a 6-inch phone.

The creator involvement is also commercially significant for the broader ad tech and marketing ecosystem. Meta's Q1 2026 earnings showed ranking improvements on Instagram drove a 10% lift in Reels time spent, and that same-day posts now represent more than 30% of recommended Reels on both Instagram and Facebook - more than double the level from a year prior. As Reels consumption grows on television screens, the advertising inventory picture changes with it.

The content standards question

Meta has been explicit about content moderation on the TV surface from the beginning. According to Meta, Instagram for TV is built for shared viewing, so content standards are applied that are suitable for a broad audience. The 13+ Content Ratings system that Instagram recently introduced on the mobile app applies on TV as well.

For teen users, the protections that exist on mobile carry across to television. According to Meta, Instagram for TV is intended to reflect the same general safeguards available on the Instagram mobile app - including limits on access to content, comments, and profiles that may be unsuitable for people under 18. Time spent on Instagram for TV contributes to a Teen Account's overall usage limits, and teens may receive the same reminders about approaching or reaching those limits, or entering sleep mode. The practical implication is that parents who have set up Teen Account controls on a child's Instagram mobile account should see those controls reflected in the TV experience as well.

Why this matters for marketing and advertising professionals

The advertising dimension of Instagram for TV is not yet explicit in Meta's announcements. The company has not described ad formats for the TV surface, auction mechanics, or how brand safety would work in the living-room context. But the trajectory has been visible for some time. PPC Land reported in May 2026 on Meta's reported talks with supply-side platforms including Magnite and Comcast about accessing connected television inventory at scale, with OEM partners also mentioned in those conversations. Whether or not those talks have progressed, the product announcement today puts Instagram on the same devices where much of that advertising infrastructure already operates.

The CTV market context is significant. Samsung Ads opened Smart TV home screens to programmatic buying via The Trade Desk and Google DV360 on June 10, 2026, powered by Magnite SpringServe, with a global rollout planned for Q3 2026. Instagram's arrival on the same Samsung devices, announced twelve days later, raises an obvious question for media planners: what does Meta's identity graph - built on years of logged-in user behavior across Facebook and Instagram - look like when it sits on the same hardware where programmatic home screen advertising is already transacting?

That question does not have a public answer yet. But the competitive arithmetic is already shifting. The Roku platform held a 32% share of open programmatic CTV inventory in February 2026, with Amazon Fire TV at 16% and Samsung at 14%. Instagram is now present on the Fire TV and Samsung ecosystems that together account for roughly 30% of that open programmatic inventory. The potential for Meta to develop advertising products within that footprint is substantial, even if those products do not exist yet in any announced form.

For advertisers currently buying Reels placements on mobile, the expansion also raises reach questions. If a Reels ad unit eventually runs on television screens, the co-viewing dynamic changes the effective audience size of each impression. Google Ads updated its reporting on June 2, 2026 to count all viewers present in front of a connected TV screen when an ad plays, not only the account holder. That definitional shift reflects how television actually works in households. Any future Instagram TV ad product would face the same audience-counting questions.

The short-form video competition on television screens is already intense. YouTube Shorts achieving 2 billion monthly TV hours puts a specific number on what incumbent scale looks like. Instagram's TV product is less than six months old, and the feature set being tested today is still early-stage by Meta's own description. What has changed is that the product now sits on the three dominant connected TV platforms in the US, and the formats under exploration - episodic, live, longer-form - suggest a roadmap that could eventually close some of the distance to more established television platforms.

For the marketing community, the immediate practical implication is to track. Instagram for TV is not yet an advertising product. It is a content product with an advertising future. The speed at which Meta develops that advertising layer - and the extent to which it integrates with or operates separately from the programmatic infrastructure already on those devices - will determine what it eventually means for media plans.

Timeline

  • December 16, 2025 - Meta begins testing Instagram for TV on Amazon Fire TV devices in the US, with Reels organized into interest-based channels, support for up to five accounts per device, and content standards aligned to the 13+ rating system recently introduced on Instagram mobile. PPC Land coverage of the initial Instagram for TV test
  • February 24, 2026 - Instagram for TV expands to Google TV devices in the US, according to an update posted to Meta's Instagram newsroom page.
  • May 1, 2026 - ExchangeWire's MadTech Podcast reports that Meta has been in talks with supply-side platforms including Magnite and Comcast, as well as OEM partners, about extending its advertising offerings into CTV at scale. PPC Land coverage of the Meta CTV talks
  • June 10, 2026 - Samsung Ads opens Smart TV home screens to programmatic buying via The Trade Desk and Google DV360, powered by Magnite SpringServe, with a global rollout planned for Q3 2026. PPC Land coverage of the Samsung programmatic home screen announcement
  • June 22, 2026 - Meta announces Instagram for TV is now available on Samsung Smart TVs in the US, including 2020 model year and newer, alongside new features in testing - casting from phone, interest-based channels, Stories on the big screen, and horizontal video - and three formats under exploration: longer-form creator content, episodic series, and Live on TV.

Summary

Who: Meta, through its Instagram platform, expanding Instagram for TV to Samsung Smart TVs in the US. Relevant parties also include Amazon (Fire TV), Google (Google TV), and the broader creator community Meta says is shaping the product.

What: Instagram for TV - an app that brings Reels to connected television screens, organized into interest-based channels - is now available on Samsung Smart TVs including 2020 models and newer. New features in testing include casting Reels from phone to TV, Stories on the big screen, horizontal video support, and channels organized around viewer interests. Three additional formats - longer-form creator content, episodic series, and Live on TV - are under exploration and aim to roll out soon.

When: The Samsung expansion and new feature announcements were made on June 22, 2026. The original Instagram for TV test launched December 16, 2025 on Amazon Fire TV. The Google TV expansion was announced February 24, 2026.

Where: The Samsung rollout covers the US market, across Samsung Smart TVs from the 2020 model year and newer. The broader Instagram for TV product is currently US-only across all three device ecosystems - Amazon Fire TV, Google TV, and Samsung Smart TV - with Meta indicating plans to expand to more devices and countries over time.

Why: Meta says it has heard from its community that watching Reels together is more fun, and is building toward a shared-viewing experience suited to the living room. The expansion to Samsung, combined with features like casting and interest-based channels, signals a deliberate effort to establish Instagram as a television platform with its own identity - distinct from the mobile app - at a moment when social video is moving steadily onto the largest screens in the home.