YouTube Reveals Over 1.5 Billion Viewers Every Month Are Watching Youtube Shorts

Source: YouTube

YouTube Shorts are seeing significant views. YouTube recently revealed that over 1.5 billion logged-in viewers every month are watching Shorts. Considering Shorts launched at the end of 2020, the amount of users that are engaging with the type of content is impressive. Since it only accounts for logged-in viewers, the amount of total viewers of Shorts is higher. Back in April, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai shared that Shorts were averaging more than 30 billion views per day, another impressive stat.

In less than two years, YouTube has built up another viable competitor to TikTok. YouTube does have a Creator Fund that encourages creators to share Shorts content like other social media platforms. However, many creators have found Shorts to be effective in helping to drive viewers to their long-form videos and overall subscriber growth, which has driven creators to pick up the format.

One difference between YouTube's approach to Shorts, compared to its competitors who also support short-form video, is that YouTube is not making it the core product of its platform. Rather, it’s positioning Shorts as a way for creators to reach new audiences and introduce them to their long-form video content, where they can connect with them on a deeper level through longer-form content.

Creators and viewers are already invested in Shorts. Given the recent testing of Shorts ads and shoppable Shorts, and how many users are engaging with Shorts content, brands will be next to get on board.

Thanks to the emergence of Shorts, there is an increasing amount of “multiformat creators” on YouTube, who are creators that create content across the platform’s various formats including video-on-demand, live streams, and short-form video. This creates the opportunity for brands to start to run branded content campaigns, where they work with creators to share sponsored content across all of YouTube’s formats and repeat the benefits of each.