YouTube Shorts is looking to give its rival TikTok a real competition now. The company confirmed that they are involved in global tests that default the YouTube mobile app to REopen directly in Shorts with a condition that the user watched Shorts videos before exiting. So instead of taking the user to the YouTube homepage, you`d be dropped into Shorts when you return to YouTube.
The company said that the test which was publicly announced last week has been running on a very small percentage of IOS global users. They are now looking forward to expanding the experiment to Android as well.
Initially launched in India a year ago, YouTube shorts arrived U.S. market in March and is expanding globally since then. The Shorts by YouTube allows users to create 60-second videos. Users can use original audio, set music, or remix it with other YouTube videos.
Like TikTok, Reels, and Snapchat, shorts include video creation tools and effects. It also offers basic editing features such as speed, timer, combining clips, etc.
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The test only targets users who engage in Shorts. YouTube says that the company is looking forward to understanding whether or not users find the feature helpful. But the test also signals that YouTube is more focused on Shorts and sees opportunity in this. As TikTok recently allowed 3 minutes videos and has been testing 5 minutes length, YouTube also sees it as a threat to its business.
To tackle the competition, YouTube this year announced to directly pay shorts creators a fund of $100 million from 2021 to 2022. These payouts may range between $100 to $10000 based on engagement and viewership of the video.
However, only an incentive to create more content is not enough. If these tests are successful, this will be a masterstroke by YouTube. This will surely increase viewership and will surely motivate creators to engage with the content. During its Q2 earnings, Alphabet announced that Shorts had surpassed 15 billion daily views which were 6.5 billion in Q1. However, experts doubt that this increase may be due to market expansion and not due to increased demand for Shorts.
This test is will decide a lot. Metrics from this test will let YouTube understand if its users demand shorts or not. We will keep you posted on this.
