YouTube Tests Merging Shorts and Long-Form Video Into a Single Feed

YouTube’s looking to capitalize on the popularity of Shorts by promoting longer video clips within the Shorts feed.

Which seems to contradict the whole concept, but with Shorts generating 70 billion views daily, it also makes some sense that YouTube would be looking to use this as a means to maximize viewership across all content types, if it can.

Which is an “if.”

As explained by YouTube:

“To try to help viewers better discover content across channels, formats, and lengths on YouTube, we’re running a few small experiments on the Watch Page and with Shorts. If you're a viewer in the experiment, these new discovery experiences could include a mix of video formats including long-form videos where you’d usually see Shorts (example: the Shorts Feed) or new feeds of long-form videos.”

So, seemingly, YouTube is trying to tap into the popularity of Shorts to boost broader video promotion, though it’s not entirely clear how horizontally formatted long-form clips will fit into the vertically aligned Shorts feed.

I assume that’s an element that YouTube has considered and factored in, but it could be an odd experience if videos not designed for Shorts are being displayed within this stream.

As noted, Shorts has been a big winner for YouTube, driving significant growth in engagement, as people become more accustomed to smaller, bite-sized video clips. With this in mind, it makes sense for YouTube to further align its recommendations around the format, in order to drive overall viewership, and it’ll be interesting to see how exactly this is rolled out, and then, how users respond.

YouTube further notes that creators may see their long-form video clips that are viewed in the Shorts Feed measured as Shorts in YouTube Analytics.

Which could also be confusing, and really, the whole concept seems a little strange from a user and creator perspective.

But YouTube clearly has a plan, and it may well help to boost promotion of longer form clips.

And it could also, eventually, lead to a situation where more YouTube viewing is done in a full-screen, vertically-aligned feed. I presume that’s where this test is headed, and it’ll be interesting to see how these display experiments work in practice.