Watching YouTube on TV is the fastest-growing segment of YouTube. As smart TVs are now a standard format, people prefer watching the news, short films, and even movies on rent on YouTube.
For YouTube, Shorts are the fastest-growing format and the company is tremendously working to increase its viewers on all available platforms.
So, now YouTube has combined both, and now you can watch Shorts on your connected TV sets. This will provide a completely new Shorts-watching experience on a larger display.
YouTube said they did many experiments to figure out the best viewing format for Shorts on larger screens. They also said that they never wanted to lose the essence of Shorts while taking them to TV.
As per YouTube “It was important that the Shorts experience on TV felt consistent with what the community sees on mobile and also natural on the bigger screen.”
So, the new Shorts on TVs will be presented in a smaller viewing window in the middle of the screen, while users can check tags, and captions or change reels with their remote. The below example shows the same.
YouTube is optimistic about getting new viewers on larger displays for Shorts. With these efforts, YouTube is maintaining its pace in rapidly growing short video format while competing with Instagram Reels and TikTok.
YouTube is also adding ads in Shorts, which will open new opportunities for brands and marketers to reach engaged audiences.
Marketers should note that increased TV viewing has signaled an upcoming trend and opportunity to show TV-like ads to viewers. This may attract advertisers as they now have to pay lesser and get a similar view experience as on traditional TVs.
So the takeaway for marketers is to start considering Smart TV for their advertising needs. While Google Ads may be the biggest platform to advertise on YouTube, Netflix may soon launch ads within their content worldwide. They already launched a less expensive model with an advert in the UK.