YouTube shorts are not only fun to watch, they can also be a powerful marketing channel as short-form content is becoming more dominant.

What are YouTube Shorts

In September of 2020, YouTube announced that it was offering a short-form video feature, called YouTube shorts.

YouTube released YouTube Shorts in India before rolling it out to America and 26 other countries by March 2021.

You can find this feature in the ‘shorts’ tab on the YouTube app on your mobile. On Desktop, you will see a shorts section on the homepage and on the navigation on the left:

On the YouTube Search Results page, YouTube Shorts and long-form videos are shown together.

Here’s one of our YouTube shorts video ranking #1 for the term ‘Social Media Marketing Statistics‘ (under the two ads).

And here’s where you can find YouTube Shorts on a channel page:

YouTube Shorts Statistics

Alright. Now let’s have a look at a couple of YouTube Shorts statistics worth knowing:

YouTube gets about 25 percent of the global mobile traffic;
YouTube is used by 1/4th of the world population;
More than 2.3 billion subscribers regularly visit YouTube every month;
YouTube Shorts got 3.5 billion daily views in 2020;
$100 million in funding on YouTube Shorts went live in 2021 to encourage content creators on the platform;
About 25.6% of YouTube Shorts originated from India, and 23.4% from the United States;
More than 70% of YouTube Watch Time Is on Mobile;
More than 70% of YouTube Shorts Are Longer than 15 Seconds, but Have a 60 Second Time Limit;
74% of Adults in America Use YouTube;
16.4% of YouTube’s Site Traffic Comes from America;
More than 26.7M people have a YouTube Premium account in 2023;
About 72 Percent Of YouTube Shorts Are Over 16 Seconds Long;
One YouTube Subscriber Is Worth 25 TikTok Followers;
YouTube generated 19.7B in revenue (ads + premium subscriptions) in 2020;
YouTube Shorts Are Growing 135 Percent Year Over Year And Have Over 1.5 Billion Monthly Users;
YouTube Shorts demand is outpacing supply (see image below);

(source)

The Future of YouTube Shorts

Short-form content like Google Web Stories, YouTube Shorts, Idea Pins, Instagram Reels, TikTok videos, etc. are an exciting new form of content consumers seem to be enjoying.

Marketers will need to adapt and add short-form content to their Content and Social Media Marketing Strategy.

We are experimenting and documenting and we will keep you updated on our learnings.

Sources:

https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/03/youtubes-100-million-shorts-fund-to-challenge-tiktok-goes-live/
https://rootnote.co/youtube-shorts-stats-and-what-they-might-mean/
https://www.adweek.com/adweek-wire/short-form-videos-continue-to-grow-viewership-on-youtube-according-to-tubular-labs/
https://www.cnbc.com/select/karat-black-card-the-credit-card-for-social-media-influencers/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1261865/youtube-premium-subscribers/
https://www.businessofapps.com/data/youtube-statistics/