Watch out TikTok, here comes YouTube. YouTube’s shorts or short form videos are increasing in popularity and have seen an increase in views over the past few months to reach 30 billion views. While this is great news for YouTube and platforms like TikTok, who have solidified themselves as the Queen of the short form video game, it does lead to a problem, revenue. While shorts could be a good way to entice people to watch longer form videos and obtain revenue through ads that way, there currently isn’t a tried-and-true way to grow the revenue of shorts alone.  My favorite app Vine disappeared for this reason; creators left for more profitable opportunities like YouTube. Currently, short form video creators are paid predominately via creator funding pools that are allocated based on video performance. However, with this system there is no reliable source of income since everything is variable and changing.

Short form video is definitely the big trend now and will be for the foreseeable future if a revenue stream can be worked out. When this happens ad creators have another way to deliver advertisements to users. Ads are already present in TikTok in the form of sponsored videos as you scroll through your feed. At TwoSix, we have launched a few TikTok ad campaigns to date and we will probably see these types of ads increase over the next couple years. As social media and the way we consume content continues to adapt, ad creators must as well.