YouTube wants brands to run campaigns on Shorts, where logged-in viewership is up 25% year-over-year

Despite the rapid growth of the Shorts content, YouTube believes its TikTok-style format still has untapped potential — and it has the data to prove it. The platform partnered with eMarketer to publish a report that characterizes Shorts as a ubiquitous hub of Gen Z consumption.

The report revealed that 96% of Gen Z survey respondents watch both long-form and short-form videos on YouTube. The four-year-old Shorts hub has turned YouTube users into multiformat consumers by steadily eating up a larger percentage of platform-wide viewership. Daily Shorts viewership among logged-in users is up 25% year-over-year, per the report.

“Consumers love short-form video,” said eMarketer VP and Principal Analyst Jasmine Enberg in a statement. “For young people in particular, it’s now a major entertainment channel, and that offers opportunities for brands from storytelling to sales.”

Brands that activate on Shorts can see strong results by working directly with creators. The report claimed that influencers are the most common source of product recommendations on social media, driving nearly half 

of all social purchases. In comparison, media companies and publishers account for just 10% of that pie.

Numbers like those are convincing advertisers to invest larger portions of their budgets in influencer marketing. Consumer goods giant Unilever recently announced that it would hire 20 times more influencers to expand its marketing plan.

YouTube wants Shorts to be part of that movement. The platform’s initial promotion of the multiformat approach occurred before ads arrived on Shorts. Now that brands can spend their money on the vertical video format, they’re experimenting with campaigns that specifically target users on Shorts. YouTube’s plan is to keep the good times rolling by getting more advertisers involved in its short-form videos.