Shorts is helping us go deeper into India's hinterlands: YouTube's Ajay Vidyasagar

Ajay Vidyasagar, regional director, APAC, YouTube Partnerships.

YouTube's bite-sized video feature, Shorts, has helped the Google-owned platform go deeper into India's hinterland since it lowers the barrier for video creation, a top executive told Moneycontrol.

"(Users) could be reluctant to make a 30-minute video or a three-hour video but if it is a 30-second video, they may consider giving it a shot. This has fuelled video creation in tier-two, tier-three and tier-four India in an extraordinary manner,” said Ajay Vidyasagar, Regional Director-Asia Pacific, YouTube Partnerships.

The company said it is seeing short-form content being created in various languages such as Marathi, Punjabi, Haryanvi, Bhojpuri, and Bengali. Further, content is also being created in various dialects from towns such as Thrissur, Palakkad, Kanyakumari and Bellary, to Sivagangai, Madurai, Malappuram and the Godavari region.

"Hindi content is also percolating down into tier-three, tier-four Hindi heartland regions. Hence, short-form creation has helped us go further into the hinterland, both from Hindi expansion on one end, and regional language expansion at the other end. The sum total of this feeds into the volume that we are beginning to experience thanks to Shorts,” Vidyasagar said.

Billions of eyeballs

YouTube Shorts, which was rolled out as the company's answer to Meta’s Reels and TikTok, completes two years this month. The company claims that Shorts are being watched by over 1.5 billion logged-in users globally every month and generate 30 billion views per day, a four-fold jump from one year ago.

The feature was first introduced in India in September 2020, a few months after the suspension of Bytedance's TikTok, in June 2020. It was subsequently expanded to over 100 countries in July 2021. Quite similar to Instagram Reels, the feature is part of the main YouTube app and allows users to create and share short vertical videos of up to 60 seconds.

Read: YouTube's Short Video Bet: Revenue sharing, music licensing, partner programme expansion

Changing short-video content consumption

Vidyasagar said that while short videos started out more with slapstick comedy or situational comedy moments, YouTube is witnessing it become "meaningful and scale in a significant manner" around information, ideas and inspiration-related content for people.

"India is becoming a hotbed on YouTube for migrating away from just slapstick comedy into more purposeful, intentful and helpful content on products like Shorts," he said. This includes sharing social messages or decoding complex topics in areas such as law, science, film editing and farming in less than a minute.

Even in traditionally popular categories such as comedy and entertainment, YouTube is witnessing innovation in terms of storytelling and formats. For instance, Malayalam creator Manjusha Martin has created a web-series in Shorts while other creators are also reimagining popular tropes in non-linear short-form episodes.

Multi-format creators

Vidyasagar said they are also witnessing creators who make short-form content go on to create mid-form and long-form content on the platform, while existing popular long-form and mid-form creators are also creating an array of short-form content, thereby leading to a trend he terms "multi-format artists”.

The company said that artist and creator channels uploading both Shorts and long-form content are seeing better overall watch-time and subscriber growth as compared to those only uploading long-form content. YouTube claims that Shorts containing content sampled from long-form videos generated over 100 billion views in April.

"The interplay between video formats mirrors the reality of today’s viewers, who expect content to suit their active lives, varied interests and wide ranging attention spans," it said in a blogpost.

Monetising short videos

Helping short-form creators monetise their content in a sustainable manner is a key focus area for YouTube in the coming year, Vidyasagar said.

"I think our single biggest goal next year is to help creators garner a community of users, and then help them convert those users into a sustainable monetisation journey," he said.

On September 20, YouTube announced that it is making major changes to its YouTube Partner Program, enabling Shorts creators to apply and make money through different formats on the platform.

As part of these changes, the video-sharing platform will start sharing advertising revenues with Shorts creators from early 2023. Those with more than 1,000 subscribers and at least 10 million views on their short videos over 90 days will be able to apply to join the programme.

YouTube Partner Program, which started in 2007, currently requires YouTubers to have over 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours over the past year.

That said, how the company shows ads and splits revenues with creators of short-form content will be different from the traditional long-form content.

YouTube will run ads between videos in the Shorts feed and these ads will not be attached to specific videos. Every month, revenue from these ads will be pooled together to pay out Shorts creators as well as help cover the costs of music licensing.

From the overall amount allocated for creators, YouTube will allow creators to keep 45 percent of the revenue share, which will be distributed based on the number of views the Shorts get in each country. Revenue share will remain the same even if creators use music in their short videos.

In comparison, YouTube pays out 55 percent of its ad revenue to creators of long-form videos while keeping the remainder. However, these creators are restricted from using commercial music and songs they don't own in their content.