- YouTube recently decided
to hop on the trend of short form vertical video
and launched their new feature,
YouTube Shorts.
No, not those kinds of shorts.
Like just short videos.
These YouTube Shorts are vertical videos
less than one minute long
and they show up in the new Shorts Shelf
on the YouTube mobile app.
They do also show up as regular videos in a few places
on the desktop version of YouTube as well.
But there's no Shorts Shelf on desktop
as of right now.
Like every new social media feature
these shorts sparked a few questions
in the minds of creators.
First, is this one of those trends
that will actually be worth jumping on?
Or is it going to be another feature that slowly fades away?
Secondly, will it help grow my channel
if I add this to my repertoire?
And thirdly, if you are willing to try it
should you create on a new dedicated channel just for shorts
or should you put your shorts right on your main channel?
The worry was that
if you put your shorts on the main channel,
you might alienate your core audience
if they don't like that type of content.
And if it does bring in a new audience
if they don't like the normal longer content
will it potentially hurt your channel
the way that it was normally going?
So being the incredibly generous
and selfless person I am,
I decided to run a test on my channel
to see if adding YouTube Shorts
would totally pick it up.
And hopefully this will give you some insight
if you've been considering it too.
So here's what I did,
in addition to my one longer video per week
I came up with the idea to do
a quick and simple tip for beginner
to intermediate camera users.
And I called it "Dunna did it quick tips."
I wanted to create something that was still on brand
and would still connect with my current viewers
to try to mitigate any friction from the new format.
But when it came to actually crunching the numbers
and figuring out whether this test was going
to totally mess things up for me,
I needed some help from someone
who was a higher level nerd wizard than I am.
I recently stumbled on a video where James Archer
put his experience in design and marketing
to practice breaking down the best length of video
for YouTube in 2021.
And I thought, this is the perfect person
to run this test.
So I gave James access to my analytics,
posted some shorts
and let him do his thing.
So secure the cup
let's see how things went with James
and I'll pop back in later.
- All right Dunna, I finally got a chance
to get into your shorts
and had a good look around
and it was very interesting.
Using the data from YouTube Studio
I compiled two sets of numbers.
One set is for the period
where you started testing
the new YouTube Shorts features,
running four shorts
and four regular videos during a 28 day period.
The second is the average
of the three 28 day periods prior to that,
which will serve as our baseline
for what's normal for your channel
before you started posting YouTube Shorts videos.
So here is a quick summary of what we found during the test.
I'll start with the good news.
It looks like you didn't screw anything up too badly
by introducing shorts on your main channel.
Views were generally up
from an average of 307,000 per period
to 382,000 per period.
Although I suspect that's mostly due to simply
posting more videos than usual.
You posted an average of 4.5 videos
per 28 day period previously
but then you posted eight videos during the test period,
four regular videos and four shorts.
Similarly, your watchtime went up
from an average of 20,000 hours to 26,000 hours,
probably also because of the increased content push.
Now, the big question,
do you lose subscribers
by putting shorts directly on your main channel?
In a typical 28 day period
you gain a little over 3,100 subscribers
and lose 750.
During the test period
you gained 4,367
subscribers and lost 818.
That's about 40% more subscribers than usual,
but with a 10% increase in lost subscribers as well.
Overall most other numbers were a bit higher as well.
Revenue was up 10%, impressions up 17%,
unique viewers up 20%, likes up 53%
and comments up 77%
compared to the average of last three periods.
And that all sounds great, right?
Well, maybe not keep watching.
For a more direct comparison
let's analyze the difference
between the four regular videos
and the four shorts videos
you posted during the test period.
The regular videos that counted
for 72% of your views during that period.
So even though you did four of each,
the regular videos got a lot more views
and the regular videos accounted for 97% of your watch time,
which is understandable.
You had 57 minutes of content in your four regular videos
but only 2.7 minutes of content in your shorts videos.
72% of new subscribers during the test period
were from your regular videos
but only 56% of your subscribers lost
were from your regular videos.
68% of your impressions were for your regular video.
So those were shown to a lot more people
than your shorts videos were.
And your regular videos
got a much higher click-through rate,
4.1% over the 2.6% click-through rate
for your shorts videos.
Your regular videos
got a lot more unique viewers as well
almost 50,000 unique viewers
to almost 20,000 for the shorts videos.
And of course, one of the most important numbers is revenue.
Your overall revenue
for the regular videos you posted was a lot higher,
coming in at $479 and 91 cents
for the four regular videos.
Compared to a mere $30 and 55 cents
for the four shorts videos.
So this is pretty conclusive proof
that regular videos are way better than shorts, right?
Well, maybe not keep watching.
Here is the thing,
shorts videos are a lot easier to produce.
To get these results,
you had to publish 56.78 minutes of content
in your four regular videos
or an average of 14 minutes
and 11 seconds each.
But just 2.73 minutes of content in your shorts videos,
which averaged about 41 seconds in length each.
That's a huge difference
in the amount of work that you put in.
You probably don't track
your hours worked on each video in detail
but we can use the length of the video
as an approximate proxy
for the amount of effort you put in.
Let's call that unit of work
minutes of content created or MOCC.
So let's see how your videos performed per MOCC
or in other words
based on the amount of work you put into them.
This is where things start to get really interesting,
for every minute of content you produced
for your regular videos during the test period,
you got 1,128 views, gained 6.8 subscribers
and made $8 and 45 cents.
Now let's compare that
to how the shorts videos performed
per minute of content created.
For every minute of shorts content you published
you got eight times as many views,
eight times as many subscribers
and six times as many comments
as you did from each minute created of your regular videos.
And importantly, you generated more revenue
per minute with your shorts videos
than you did with your regular videos.
Your shorts made $11 and 18 cents
per minute of content created
instead of $8 and 45 cents.
So that pretty much seals the deal, right?
Shorts are obviously performing better than regular videos.
Well, maybe not keep watching.
For one thing,
when we break everything down into MOCCs.
One of the biggest differences
between shorts and regular videos
is the number of people who unsubscribed from your channel.
Each minute of shorts content you create
results in 16 times as many people unsubscribing
than each minute of regular content you create.
Where each MOCC of regular videos
results in 13 times more subscribers than unsubscribers.
Each MOCC of shorts videos results
in only six times more subscribers than unsubscribers.
Now you are still getting more subscribers
per minute of content created with shorts
than with regular videos.
But that ratio worries me,
there is something there.
And here's what your traffic sources look like.
For regular videos,
browse is your number one traffic source by far,
followed by external links, YouTube search
and suggested videos.
For shorts however,
the shorts feed appears to be the primary traffic driver
accounting for 40% of all traffic to those videos.
That's a lot of eggs in one basket.
If the algorithm decides
to show you the viewers in the short feed that's great.
But if it doesn't,
you are just not gonna get
the kind of views you are used to getting
with your regular videos
because there's almost no support
in the other traffic sources,
there's some definite risks.
Also the audience for the shorts videos
seems to be significantly younger
than the audience for your regular videos.
Your 25 to 34 range is about steady
but you have significant drops in your audience
above that age range
and a major increase in the 18 to 24 range,
as well as the introduction of viewers
in the 13 to 17 range.
These age ranges are also interesting when you compare them
to the average percentage viewed of your videos.
For your regular videos,
there's a pretty standard pattern
of viewers watching about 32 to 34%
of each video regardless of age.
And that number is understandable
given the length of the videos,
which averaged just over 14 minutes each.
However, your shorts videos
have a much more distinctive age-related pattern
with 18 to 24 is watching 69% of your shorts videos
which should be noted
are only 41 seconds long on average
and your largest age group the 24 to 34
is making it on average just 18 seconds into these videos.
The 35 to 44s last about seven seconds and so on.
When you struggled to break the halfway point
on a 41 second video,
there's potentially an issue there.
When you factor in subscription status
there were some interesting patterns there as well.
Subscribers accounted for just 29.2% of your regular views
but 44.7% of your shorts views,
which could point to a struggle for shorts
to get a broader audience
that's not already subscribed to your channel.
On your regular videos
most of your likes come from subscribers
and your dislikes from non-subscribers, which makes sense.
However, on your shorts videos
most of your likes come from your subscribers
but so do most of your dislikes.
Which points to the possibility
that you are alienating your core audience
with this different style of video that you've introduced.
In terms of devices, not surprisingly
the shorts videos lean very heavily toward mobile devices
which account for 76% of your views
compared to 48% of your regular video views.
Your shorts videos actually had
the lowest average view duration on mobile phones,
while computer tablet, TV
and game console all landed in the 34 to 39 second range.
Mobile devices were only 29 seconds,
that means the core audience for shorts
is actually sticking around the least,
which is kinda rough.
In terms of geography, it was also worth noting
that 13.8% of your shorts traffic came from India
making it your second largest market,
probably because that's a test market
where they are beta testing the shorts functionality
before rolling it all out to other markets.
So what does this all mean?
Well, the first thing we wanted to figure out was
whether you were significantly
damaging your channel somehow by introducing shorts.
And the good news appears to be
that nothing catastrophic seems to have happened yet.
It also appears that shorts might be a viable way
to supplement your channel's growth
by adding revenue, views and subscribers,
without a huge investment of additional effort
in terms of minutes of content created.
If you can whip out some shorts here and there
it seems to get at least some positive results.
However, there are downsides and risks
and including some latent discontent
among your existing audience
who seem to be exhibiting some annoyance
with this different type of content.
It also comes with a shift toward younger viewers
mostly on mobile devices
who are barely watching half of these already short videos.
In the long run injecting
a lot of these people into your audience
could have a detrimental effect on your regular videos,
which they are likely to engage with less
than your current audience does,
making your numbers go down overall.
And of course, all of this comes with the usual disclaimer
that is based on a relatively small sample size.
We might come to different conclusions in a few months
if we go back and perform a similar analysis.
Anyway, thanks for letting me spend some time
in your shorts Dunna.
It was very enlightening in there.
- Wow, okay, that was a lot to take in.
Huge thanks to James
for taking such a deep dive into my shorts
and for being so thorough while he was in there.
Now, a couple of things that I personally noticed
as I watched this whole test go by.
The shorts didn't behave that much differently
than regular videos for me.
I had one of the four shorts
that YouTube deemed worthy to push harder
and got significantly more views.
The majority of those views
on that video coming from being served
on the Shorts Shelf itself.
So no surprise there
that having your short served on the Shorts Shelf
is going to be a huge part of their potential success.
As far as whether it screwed up my channel, I'd say no.
Having watched my channels ups and downs
over the past four years
this was not really anything out of the ordinary.
And I do think that as long
as you can find a good idea for your shorts,
something that's complimentary to your main content
it's worth posting on your main channel
to try and widen your audience
and use more channel reach.
However, if you want to use shorts
to do something completely different to your normal content
you might still wanna consider that second channel.
But as always, I wanna know your thoughts,
how do you feel about YouTube Shorts?
And are you going to be using them.
Leave a comment down below
and on your way down there hit that like
and subscribe button, hit that bell notification
so you don't miss out on future reviews and tutorials.
Huge thank you to James,
make sure to go check out his channel as well.
Thank you so much for watching
and I'll see you next time.
- Well, maybe not, keep watching.
(upbeat music)