The fastest-growing YouTube usage category is connected TV (CTV), or watching on your home TV, while Shorts is the fastest-growing YouTube video kind. Therefore, it seems sense that YouTube would mix the two. As a result, YouTube has introduced a new Shorts experience for your home TV that will display Shorts in a full-screen, interactive manner on your larger viewing device.
The new Shorts display will, as you can see in this example, show a smaller viewing window in the centre of the screen while allowing users to interact with Shorts clips via their TV remote, including the ability to skip through, choose topic tags, and more.
The benefit of showing Shorts on a larger screen is that more viewers will be able to tune in at once, changing the dynamics and possibly improving user engagement with YouTube’s TV alternative options.
For marketers, the expansion of CTV viewership is a significant development because it effectively makes TV-like advertisements possible without the expensive cost of traditional TV campaigns and with alternatives for more precise targeting on digital platforms.
Additionally, the addition of advertisements to YouTube’s Shorts could present new opportunities for marketers to connect with interested viewers through the CTV system. A significant change has been the growth of VOD services in general; in fact, the majority of younger viewers no longer watch traditional TV channels at all, instead leaning heavily toward YouTube and content producers through apps, as well as Netflix, Disney+, and other services.
The launch of Shorts on YouTube CTV is another important development in this area that all marketers should be aware of.
