3.1% Lift, 15M Eligible Creators, $1.4M+ New Revenue: Scaling Gifting Into Instagram’s Creator Flywheel
Instagram had no fan-to-creator gifting. No infra, no system, no mental model. I led the design of Instagram Gifts from inception — launching the company’s first cross-surface gifting experience, and evolving it into a behavior-based monetization engine. Distributed across Reels, Profiles, and Notifications, the system now supports 15M creators, drives measurable lifts in output and retention, and establishes a reusable foundation for emotional monetization across Meta.
No Templates. No Precedent. Just the Right Product to Build
When I joined, Instagram had no gifting infrastructure — and no clarity on how fan monetization should work. The opportunity wasn’t to tweak a feature, it was to define a category. The question wasn’t “how do we let fans tip?” It was “how do we make creators want to post again because they feel seen?”
That meant designing a feedback system, not just a financial transaction — one that felt native to Reels, meaningful to creators, and scalable across billions of interactions.
Designing a System That Turns Appreciation Into Action
The product strategy hinged on building a loop:
Gift → Feedback → Motivation → More Content → Repeat Gifting
I designed the UX and system architecture around this cycle. Every surface — from the gesture entry point to post-gift follow-ups to creator-facing earnings feedback — reinforced the loop.
Key mechanics included:
Simple, expressive gifting flows integrated into Reels and Profiles
Lightweight post-gift feedback moments (creator seen states, responses)
Creator dashboards connecting gifting events to content performance
Retention hooks based on fan history and creator engagement patterns
We tuned emotional interaction into measurable behavior — and built a system that scaled without losing fidelity.
From MVP to Strategic Lever
Gifts 1.0 proved fans would participate. Gifts 2.0 proved the system could retain, monetize, and scale.
The platform now supports 15M creators, spans 11 countries, and has become a foundational piece of Instagram’s monetization roadmap. The architecture informed future investments in:
Universal Gifting
Creator Recognition Systems
Lifecycle retention strategy for emerging creators
The goal wasn’t just to build a surface.
It was to create a monetization pattern that felt human, scaled globally, and shipped cleanly.
We didn’t optimize the gesture.
We operationalized the impact.