The argument around whether or not the Streaming Wars are still ongoing continues to rage in certain media circles, but a new battle for viewers’ eyes is beginning to roil the landscape: The short-form video wars. YouTube has taken another step in that “conflict” on Tuesday, announcing that its “Shorts” videos will now be available to watch on smart TVs made after 2019.
YouTube Shorts are videos that run 60 seconds or less, and were launched by YouTube as an answer to TikTok, the wildly popular short-form video social media platform that has swept across the face of the globe. Previously, YouTube Shorts were only available to watch on mobile devices.
Shorts on TV replicates the phone viewing experience by keeping videos confined to a vertical window within the TV screen. YouTube then fills in the blank spaces on the sides of the video with customized content.
“An incredible amount of thought and care has gone into bringing this vertical, mobile-first experience to the big screen,” YouTube’s Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan said.
It will be interesting to see if TikTok makes a corresponding move in response to the expansion of YouTube Shorts onto smart TVs. TikTok is already available to watch on connected TVs (CTVs), having launched its app on VIZIO smart TVs in June and a number of other brands late last year.
The rest of the streaming industry can only look on, and hope that short-form videos don’t further eat into the viewing times on platforms like Netflix. Indeed, amongst Americans under the age of 35 YouTube and TikTok are already more popular than Netflix, and the next-closest subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service — Prime Video — is way down in the sixth overall spot.
While comparing short-form videos to the movies and TV series found on SVOD platforms isn’t exactly apples to apples, it does provide an indication as to what streamers are up against. The addition of short videos to smart TVs will only exasperate the situation as far as streaming services are concerned. Shorts on TikTok and YouTube have already been exploding without the assistance of CTV apps.
If shorts continue to be as popular with the younger demographic of viewers as they currently are, perhaps some SVOD services will try their hand at hosting short video platforms of their own. Netflix is currently using other strategies, like its continuing investment in mobile games to bring in a more youthful audience. But if that idea fails, more streamers could adopt some version of short-form videos to attract younger users in the future.