YouTube’s cross-platform takeover is putting pressure on creators

When the first YouTube video was uploaded in 2005, the only way to watch it was on a desktop computer.

Now, 20 years later, YouTube has moved on to other screens. It’s the No. 1 streaming service on connected TVs (CTV), and in a recent blog post, CEO Neal Mohan called YouTube “the new television.” Even older folks are in on the trend, with the 65+ crowd doubling their YouTube consumption on TV sets in the last two years alone, according to Nielsen.

At the same time, almost every major platform has embraced short-form vertical video—and YouTube is no exception. It unveiled its TikTok competitor, Shorts, in 2020, and counted more than 2 billion logged-in users watching them each month since July 2023. With TikTok’s future still uncertain, that number could continue to grow.

The platform is also becoming increasingly synonymous with the booming podcasting industry: More than 1 billion viewers tune into YouTube to watch podcasts each month, according to company data from February.

Kurt Wilms, senior director of product management at YouTube, told us in an email that the company isn’t hyperfocused on any one format as it seeks to grow viewership numbers and ad revenue, but is focused on “ensuring that viewers find the content they want to watch when they come to YouTube, whether that’s a long-form video, a podcast, or a Short.”

Creators, publications, and brands that rely on YouTube say increased TV viewing and the emphasis on Shorts are prompting them to continue shifting their strategies to take advantage of the different formats. But it can be harder than it looks to keep up with rising production costs and determine whether short-form or long-form content is better for business.

Cutting it short?

Sharon Mussalli, CEO of media company NowThis, sees YouTube’s dual emphasis on Shorts and CTV as a strategy to take over what has become memeified as “big and little screen.” In other words, the platform is looking to capture consumers’ very short attention spans by providing content for any and all devices.

NowThis joined YouTube in 2013 and over the years has posted what Mussalli called “TV-style content.” In the last year since taking over as head of the company, though, she’s made a conscious effort to shorten NowThis’s YouTube content; so far, she has seen promising results with Shorts, including “an increase in follower count and a lot of passive revenue,” she said.

NowThis still posts long-form content, like its celebrity interview series The Hangout, which averages around 10 minutes per video, but Mussalli said Shorts have allowed the company to experiment with concepts before committing to longer series, which, she noted, often require multiple episodes to gain traction.

“A cost per long-form piece of content will always be much higher than a cost per short-form piece of content,” she said. “For new IP, it’s really risky to spend quite a bit of money on a new concept for a long-form version.”

But lower costs can also come with smaller payoffs, author, tech reporter, and creator Taylor Lorenz, who has 68,000 subscribers on YouTube, told us, so much so that Shorts can be at odds with some creators’ business models.

“It’s an existential threat to the creators’ business model on YouTube because it’s short. You can’t monetize as effectively on Shorts as you can with long-form content,” she told us. “I am trying to get away from short-form content, because of the simple fact that you cannot monetize it as well as long-form content, and you don’t develop that deep relationship with the audience.”

Creator Gianna Christine, who has been posting to YouTube for more than 10 years and has more than 700,000 subscribers, said that Google AdSense, which helps creators monetize their YouTube channels, as well as product tagging, has allowed her to earn more on YouTube than other platforms and has become her highest revenue stream through both view monetization and affiliate revenue. Still, she agreed with Lorenz about the need for longer content to build community.

“I really like how [YouTube has] the option for both short-form and long-form because I think there’s advantages to both,” Christine said. “Short form is really great for growth and exposure, but I do feel like longer videos are what really helps you build that connection with your audience, which is really important as a creator.”

In recent months, Christine has posted exclusively Shorts, which she said has led to a “huge amount of growth;” her account has accrued more than 150,000 new subscribers and 140 million views since Thanksgiving, she told us. But her biggest reach is still on TikTok, where she has 2.7 million followers.

Christine said posting Shorts consistently and multiple times a day has helped her grow her following, and she’s been using the medium, as well as YouTube’s polling capability, as a testing ground for long-form content. Still, it can be harder for creators just starting out on Shorts to stand out compared to on TikTok, where the powerful For You page algorithm can quickly rocket creators to virality, she said.

Mussalli agreed: she said that Shorts makes sense as a complement to other short-form platforms as a way of reaching and engaging audiences, while TikTok remains king when it comes to discoverability.

Changing channels

Despite the popularity of short-form video, there is still plenty of demand for long-form content on YouTube—or at least videos that last as long as it takes to eat a meal. According to a report from streaming data analysis company Digital i, as of last October, videos 30 minutes or longer in length accounted for 73% of all viewing time on YouTube.

Christine told us she’s noticed more people have been watching her videos on TV. In 2024, TV viewing accounted for 9.8% of Christine’s video views; between February and March, that number nearly doubled to 18.3%.

YouTube’s ascension to its status as the most-watched streaming platform on TV for two years running is a “10-year effort in the making” for the platform, according to Wilms.

“When YouTube launched, everyone thought it would be the new TV, but then came the rise of smartphones, so we shifted to mobile, but we still made a long-term investment in connected TV,” he said. “Now we’re seeing viewing trends shifting back to TV.”

Later this year, YouTube will begin to offer creators the option to organize videos into seasons and episodes when viewing content on TV, Wilms said.

Creators and publishers alike have made their presence on the platform known by posting long-form and episodic content, ranging from Michelle Phan and the early days of YouTube makeup tutorials to NPR’s ongoing Tiny Desk series. Some creators, like MrBeast, have transcended success on YouTube to create more traditional content on platforms like Amazon Prime Video.

This propensity for episodic content even inspired creator investment company Spotter to hold a first-of-its-kind upfronts-style event for creators and TV advertisers earlier this year. At the Spotter Showcase, CMOs from major brands heard from participating creators about their planned series, formats, and ideas, and saw audience data from popular channels like MrBeast, Dude Perfect, and Colin and Samir, according to Spotter president Nic Paul.

“[Creators] are studio execs,” Paul said, noting that regular uploads and production schedules help support “appointment-based viewing” that’s similar to traditional TV. “If we can actually help the industry understand, on a creator basis, the opportunities, we think that the ecosystem is going to be even better.”

YouTube’s streaming dominance means there is increasing competition for eyeballs on the platform: some TV shows, like NBC’s Saturday Night Live, upload entire episodes cut into short clips on the platform each week, and there are plenty of free movies and TV shows to watch on the platform.

Competing with more traditionally produced content can mean that the costs of creating long-form content can be daunting. Chef and cookbook author Carla Lalli Music recently shared that as of late January, since starting her YouTube channel in October 2021, she had amassed more than 18 million views and earned $187,997 in revenue—not enough to outweigh the costs of production, with each long-form video costing more than $3,500 to produce, shoot, and edit.

And advertisers, it seems, aren’t alleviating that cost burden as much as some creators might hope. “The hurdle that I think we all want brands to get over is this idea that there’s some difference between eyeballs that exist on YouTube versus eyeballs that exist on linear TV,” Sean Evans, the host of the digital series Hot Ones, said during a panel at SXSW earlier this year.

Brands creating content on YouTube are facing the same budgetary pressures. Beauty brand Jones Road recently released I Am Me, a branded interview series for YouTube featuring founder Bobbi Brown speaking with other women about empowerment and self-confidence. Though CEO Cody Plofker said that YouTube offers an opportunity for brand storytelling and deeper audience connection, he noted that creating on it is expensive, and the brand doesn’t view its content creation on the platform as a revenue source like a media company might. . To help offset the cost of production, the series was made possible through a partnership with JPMorgan Chase. 

“We don’t have giant budgets, but we also have high expectations,” Plofker told us. “So we said we’re only going to do this if we get a sponsor—not even to make money, but just to cover costs, to be able to invest in making the best content that we can have.”

As both creator and brand, the Jones Road team also buys media across the platform. Plofker said programmatic YouTube ads are about 15% of the brand’s media mix, which allows it to reach a more diverse demographic that tends to show up on site. As YouTube watchers continue to choose TV screens, that can present an attribution challenge.

“People aren’t going to be able to click, so that won’t always look great in measurement tools,” Plofker said. “But there’s ways to test it, and the value can totally be there.”

According to Wilms, YouTube has paid creators, artists, and media companies more than $70 billion in the last three years overall. Last month, it announced plans to automate mid-roll ads, which it has said could improve creators’ ability to monetize their content.

Tuning in

YouTube’s living-room presence has also been bolstered by a radio-meets-TV hybrid: video podcasts. The platform jumped from the third-most-accessed by podcast listeners in 2021 to the No. 1 podcast platform in 2023, before hitting the 1 billion monthly active podcast viewers mark in February.

Scott Newman, founder and creative director of creative agency Work x Work, said that brand marketers continue to diversify their channels, and video podcasts are a piece of that. In his experience, video platforms like YouTube can help unlock bigger audiences, which in turn could mean greater profit.

“As podcast publishers continue to add video, I’m not being asked [by brands] for video podcasts,” he said. “It’s more like, ‘I want more reach. I want to reach this audience. How can I engage in custom ways to address this audience or this vertical of content?’”

Media and investment company FlightStory works with both podcast creators and advertisers, and CRO Christiana Brenton has seen the value of a YouTube-first approach.

For creators, Brenton said video-centric podcasting changes how content is filmed from the start. “If you have the default assumption that more people are going to be watching this content than they are listening, then that changes everything with regards to set design, creativity, lighting, the opportunity for more of a documentary-style feature,” she said.

But that extra effort can also bring a wider set of potential marketing materials, and therefore costs, she told us.

Brenton, who says she has personally managed thousands of ad campaigns, maintains that “it’s absolutely unequivocally the case that video-first formats deliver better results for clients.” For one of FlightStory’s main podcasts, The Diary of a CEO, long-term partners buy annual laydowns that include a baked-in visual ad format, which live in perpetuity on YouTube, allowing for “scaling CPM and ROAS efficiencies,” she said.

YouTube continues to commit to building out podcasts on the platform too. In a blog post earlier this year, Mohan said that it plans to “roll out more tools to support podcasters, improve monetization for creators, and make it even easier to discover podcasts.”

That might just look like more podcasts on the TV screen, where talk shows were once the norm: In 2024, viewers streamed more than 400 million hours of podcasting programming every month on their TV screens, according to YouTube.

“Podcasters today need to be everywhere their audiences are,” Wilms said. “Including the TV.”