SHORT FORM FATIGUE: Companies are already
giving up on short form content. Last month, Meta announced that they will stop offering bonuses to
short form creators. Why you ask? Well, it turns out that pushing short form content actually
loses Meta money. Here’s the thing, while Instagram reels have exploded in popularity,
they’re not exactly stealing marketshare away from TikTok. Rather, it’s stealing market share
away from themselves. Instead of scrolling through pictures or the newsfeed on Instagram,
people are now scrolling through Reels. This doesn’t sound like a big deal until you consider
that Reels are substantially less profitable than Instagram’s other products. In fact,
according to Zuckerberg himself, people switching to Reels is costing the company $500 million
every quarter or $2 billion every year. And the most ironic part is that this entire time Meta
had been paying creators to make reels. So, really, they were paying to lose revenue. No
wonder they stopped. But, it’s not just Meta who’s pivoting away from short form content
either. TikTok themselves are very much trying to move away. In fact, they’ve been aggressively
increasing their max video length. What started at 15 seconds grew to 60 seconds to 3 minutes to
now 10 minutes. TikTok has even been experimenting with landscape mode on Android. So, TikTok is very
much heading towards the direction of becoming the YouTube were people don’t search. Also,
it’s not like people search on YouTube all that much anyway. Most of the time, you just use the
home page to find videos. But, what happened? Why are all these companies pivoting away from
shorts? Wasn’t shorts the new medium due to ever decreasing attention spans and the need
for constant stimulation. Well, it turns out that the answer is no. While short form content
is great at garnering a lot of attention in the short term, it’s not exactly the best model for
companies or audiences long term. Instagram and YouTube are starting to realize that they invested
way too much money on a low ROI fad, and Tiktok is fighting hard to not become the next Vine. So,
here’s why companies got short form content wrong and why they’re already backing off.
UNLOYAL CREATORS:
All successful creator driven platforms need a strong base of creators. This is why platforms
like YouTube and Spotify has even turned to offering exclusivity deals like its NFL
football or something. So, it would be quite an issue if these platforms were struggling to
grow a creator base and that’s very much the case with short form content. This isn’t to say that
TikTok and Reels aren’t able to garner a bunch of creators because there’s no shortage of that. But,
what there is is a shortage of a loyal short form creators. Here’s the thing, 9 times out of 10,
people don’t start posting short form content because that’s what they truly want to do. Rather,
creators start posting short form content because they see opportunity, they see a gold rush. Most
creators never find gold but even those who do don’t want to reinvest the profits into mining
for more, it’s simply too risky. Rather, what they want to do is sell the gold and start a stable
business. In other words, they want to switch to long form content. Much of this attitude can
actually be explained by the algorithms used to promote short form content. Your follower count
really means nothing. This is why its a gold rush. If you start posting today, you have as good of
a chance of posting a viral video as someone with 10 million followers. Actually, I take that back,
if a creator has that many followers, they’re probably pretty good at making viral content. But,
the point is that the pivotal factor is the content itself, not the follower count.
While this is great for new creators, it’s absolute garbage when it comes to longevity.
Creators are forced to always keep up with the latest trends and put out something that can go
viral instead of creating content that’s actually impactful and meaningful. This is why you see so
many TikTok stars that rise out of nowhere and then disappear faster than they blew up. Recently,
I was watching an Airrack video where he trapped 25 Tiktokers inside his house. Many of these
creators had millions if not tens of millions of followers. So, I don’t know if it’s just me but
I had no idea who any of these people were. Let me know down below if you were in the same boat,
but anway, even for creators who enjoy making short form content want to switch to long form
because it’s simply the smarter business decision. That covers basically 90% of short form creators.
The other 10% are actually long form creators. Personally, I’m guilty of this as well. A lot
creators have figured that they might as well try adapting their regular long form content
to short form. The mentality is usually, if it works, great, if it doesn’t, not a big deal. So,
little to say, no creator on TikTok, Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts is really loyal to said
platform. For all of them, short form content is really just a springboard to garner attention
or a medium to expand their existing long form content. So, when you’re trying to run a creator
driven platform with such people, well let’s just say it’s difficult to say the least. But,
building up a loyal creator base is just the first of these platform’s worries.
HESITANT ADVERTISERS:
Not only do these platforms have to deal with flaky creators, but they also have to deal
with flaky advertisers. The reality is that no advertiser really wants to advertise on short
form content. This isn’t to say that short form advertising is ineffective. Biaheza, for example,
has shown time and time again that short form advertising is not only effective but it can
be super lucrative. But, with that being said, shorts just don’t vibe with most brands. I mean,
can you imagine GE making a TikTok ad about their refrigerators or Intel making a Tiktok ad about
the new i9 processor. It just doesn't feel right. Now, some legacy companies are able to pull it
off. A notable example that comes to mind is Coca Cola. But, just because they’re able to
make effective ads doesn’t mean that they want to advertise on these platforms. The reality is that,
in many cases, these companies just don’t want to associate with short form content because they
see it as a risk. I’m sure you’re familiar with how companies don’t want to associate with the
following content on YouTube. Well, news flash this is basically the entirety of TikTok. But,
let’s even put that aside. Let’s say you’re ok with advertising next to this type of content.
You still have the challenge of running a successful ad campaign. While TikTok can be
great for promoting products like this, it’s not exactly great when it comes to building general
brand awareness and visibility. Oftentimes, when companies like Apple or Coca Cola put out an ad,
they’re not trying to get you buy their product. They don’t need you to click on the ad or buy
on the spot. Rather, they just want to build up their brand presence. This is decently possible
on YouTube given that viewers are forced to watch for 5 or 15 seconds. But, on TikTok,
if an ad doesn’t pique the viewers interest within 0.2 seconds, they’re gonna swipe up. This means
that advertisers are forced to include some sort of gimmicky hook which again just doesn’t fit with
their brand image. And if you don’t believe me, you can just look at the numbers. For my usual
videos, I generally get an ad rate of $4-$5 per thousand views. For shorts, I generally get an ad
rate of 5 cents per thousand views. This basically indicates that advertisers are 100 times less
willing to bid on short form ad slots as opposed to long form ad slots. It also gives a lot more
context as to why creators want to switch to long form content so badly. The reality is that if you
wanna make a living off of short form content, you have to pull in a braindead amount of views every
month. To make just $5000 per month for example, you have to pull in a 100 million views. Let me
phrase that in a different way. You have to reach 1/8th of the entire world population
every single year just to make 60 grand. At least, creators have the option to do direct
brand deals or promote their own products. For these platforms, the only way they make money is
through these ads. So, even with their ridiculous scale, it’s just not all that profitable and it’s
no wonder why Meta is losing $2 billion every year by pushing short form content.
A WANING AUDIENCE:
While unloyal creators and hesitant advertisers are no doubt a pain in the neck,
atleast there’s some hope with that. As more modern companies start advertising on short form
platforms, ad rates should go up which should make creating short form more worthwhile for platforms
and creators. But, something that these platforms can’t recover from is a waning audience. The truth
is that people are getting tired of predictable TikTok content and the main reason for this is
that these videos rarely have any substance. Every single video is based around a thirst trap or some
sort of gimmick, but rarely do they have any sort of real takeaway or message. This is why people
forget most shorts within 2 minutes of watching it. It feels good in the moment but the feeling
doesn't last long. But, wait a minute, isn’t people’s attention spans getting crushed by
these platforms? Well, to be honest, I think this effect is vastly overstated. TikTok is basically
like ice cream. People like eating ice cream. They may even eat it on a daily basis. But,
just because a person eats ice cream doesn’t mean that they’re suddenly going to stop eating steak
or pizza or burgers or real food in general. In fact, if you had the option of only consuming ice
cream or pizza, I’m pretty sure that virtually everyone will choose pizza. Looking back, the
pandemic forced most people to stay at home which led to them snacking way more than usual. But,
as people return to their normal lives, they’re social media diet is also returning to a real food
and this is already evident in the stats. In 2021, TikTok rose to be the most popular domain in the
entire world. But, in 2022, TikTok fell down to #3 as Google and Facebook regained their leads.
And looking forward, it seems like this trend will only continue as TikTok is looking more and more
like Vine. I know that most of you just remember Vine as a big failure, but Vine was actually super
popular for a period of time. In fact, at the end of 2015, Vine had as many as 200 million users.
Why did Vine fail then you ask? Well, you can take it from the horse’s mouth itself. Twitter,
the parent company of Vine, was unable and/or unwilling to pay the creators that made the
platform so popular in the first place. This was actually Jack Dorsey’s biggest regret. Now,
what is TikTok doing? Well, they’re unable and/or unwilling to pay the creators that made their
platform so big. And as audiences and creators naturally shift back to Facebook and YouTube,
these platforms see less of a reason to be so aggressive when it comes to promoting shorts.
THE FATE OF SHORTS:
In the end, it’s not surprising why companies are backing away from short form content. The reality
is that creators are just using shorts as a springboard, advertisers don’t wanna get involved,
and audiences are by no means ditching long form content. This isn’t to say that TikTok
is going to die like Vine, but what has become abundantly clear is that short form content
is simply an addition to long form content not a replacement for it like the media often suggested.
So, Meta and YouTube no longer feel threatened by TikTok. If anything, it’s actually TikTok that
strives to be more like Meta and YouTube so that they don’t end up like Vine. Combine this with the
recession, and it simply makes no sense to bet so much on a historically flaky medium and that’s why
companies are already giving up and pulling back on short form content. Did you ever buy into the
short form craze? Comment that down below. Also, drop a like if you’re glad that short form content
is dying. And of course, consider checking out our discord community to suggest future video ideas
and consider subscribing to see more questions logically answered.