Is Long Form Content Dying?  ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Home Feed Differences Matter** - YouTube feeds vary widely between users and devices, so one person's homepage isn't universal. - Travis and Dan stress that observed shifts (more shorts/streams) can be tests or audience-driven changes. Transcript: Travis I've seen it talked about by a couple of people. I know you have as well. And I'm just going to say the clickbaity version of it, which is the death of long form on YouTube. Is it dying? Is it dead? Is it gone? Is it dead and gone? And if, if you're not sure what I'm talking about, there's been a couple of people that have noticed that on the YouTube homepage, which is where like 70% of all views come from, seeing A lot more push towards short content, especially shorts content, and stuff like that, rather than the long form content that YouTube has always been known for. And that's gonna be kind of scary for long form content creators. And in talking to some content creators, and even looking at the main YouTube or the main vidIQ channel we're seeing that our YouTube shorts are kind of growing and getting a lot more Views than our long form content and you know there's a lot of people saying that this is a YouTube thing and that they are actually pushing this what has been your experience what type Dan Of things have you seen people talk about I feel like I could take the entire time we have up on this because I've talked to so many people. I've seen so many things and I'm just utterly confused. So on the one hand, I talked to people who feel like what you said, like long form video seems to be deprioritized. We are seeing it on the main channel for vidIQ, but for my personal channel, way outside of our vidIQ niche, my long form videos are doing better than ever. And my shorts aren't, they're fine. Like they're not doing anything. But then again, I'm, I'm right now I'm prioritizing long form. It just, it goes to show that like, there's a lot of nuance in whatever's happening. And I think as always, YouTube is doing its YouTube thing. So this would be a good preference for this entire conversation. YouTube is always going to be testing stuff. And one thing to really make clear here is what one person's home feed looks like doesn't necessarily mean it's what everybody's home feed looks like. So I guess that's a good way to start this off. But one of the things ([Time 0:01:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5c1ce532-e66b-4f6d-8132-e63bdbfb3ed0)) - **Autoplay Caused Live Stream Spikes** - Dan describes streams and autoplay pushing viewers into live streams, boosting concurrent viewer counts. - He links TV autoplay behavior to unexplained snowballing stream numbers he and friends observed. Transcript: Dan But one of the things that I've been talking to my friends about, because we all kind of live stream and stuff is like, how are your live streamers doing? Because one of the clips I saw was someone talking about how live streams were being prioritized in their home feed. And it was like live stream, live stream, live stream. And they were kind of confused by this. Like, I don't watch the many live streams. Why am I seeing all these live streams? And it made me feel like maybe live streams, since they're relevant and they're right now and YouTube loves relevance, maybe they are just being pushed to people more often. And my friends and myself are seeing jumps and views on streams concurrently. Then again, we're also in a niche where some stuff has happened and there's more reason to watch us right now. Like our topic is starting to like gain more traction at the moment. And so I'm kind of in this echo chamber with my friends who are all kind of doing the same thing and it's doing well. And we're like, is this a YouTube thing? Or is this just the way things are right now? So it's's just it's all very interesting and my experience varies a lot which is why I enjoy talking about this because maybe maybe this conversation will help me put some things in perspective If not I at least hope that the chaotic stuff that's happening on all my home feeds explains maybe what's happening on other people's home feeds out there yeah and I think it's important Travis To acknowledge a couple things that just because one person sees something doesn't mean that everyone's going to see the exact same thing especially when it comes to youtube can you Talk about what linus tech tips us all which by the way is one of the larger tech youtube channels on youtube and they've had a lot of things to say when it comes to uh the way things have worked Dan But what is what are they recently said about like their home feed yeah uh i don't know maybe we could pull this up it's from their podcast there's a clip there's a few clips about it and One of them i watched uh linus pulls up his home page and it was for him and he's like complaining about this he's like this is a live stream this is a live stream and this is an ad and then that's The only three things at the very top row it just had enough space for three thumbnails then you have to scroll down a little bit to see the short shelf then i think the next thing he saw was The playable shelf or it was a vod and then the playable shelf but he was basically saying like look how far i had to scroll to finally see a normal youtube video just a vod yeah and then they Got really confused because they saw a video from the outdoor boys guy but it was it was his old channel and they spent most of the time talking about that and being confused about it, which Is pretty funny. But in any case, I thought this was interesting given that my live stream numbers have been up. My friend's live stream numbers have been up and something else has been happening just around my niche. I'm finding streamers that seem to be botting or in their, the way they defend it, they're like, no, I'm not botting. YouTube is taking people who are falling asleep while I stream and pushing them to my live stream. Oh, interesting. And, and so it's this weird thing where you kind of have to take them with their word, but if you watch their streams, their numbers go up like unnaturally, like 50 to a hundred viewers Every like few minutes. And the is dead like they'll have their normal audience there maybe 20 people participating in chat and their numbers are going up going up going up could it be that thing where they now Travis Um simultaneously put it uh in in the shorts uh kind of live stream thing at the same time if they did that i think the numbers wouldn't reflect on only that long form i'm watching yeah see That's what I don't know. When you're streaming to both, when you look at the live stream numbers, is that aggregate of both or is it just the one stream? That I don't know. Dan I think when I did this before they introduced that feature of dual streaming at the same time, it was two different sets of numbers that I had access to. But maybe it's changed. When they were asked about it on social media, they said, no, what's happening is they are convinced what it is, is YouTube's recommendation system is basically pushing people towards Live streams. And upon testing this lightly myself, what happened was I watched a video, I let the video end and I let YouTube autoplay take over and it pushed me to a live stream. So that could be happening. The person, the person, the people I'm talking about, there's multiple people stream at night and at least in like America. And it would make sense that their stream is just going and going. And the number keeps growing because people were watching a video and they let YouTube autoplay just do its thing. They're watching on TV. TV loves to prioritize live streams. And they just leave it on. ([Time 0:02:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/57780100-7d44-4175-84ff-f2badb067e91)) - **Shorts Change Creator Mix** - Shorts attract new creators and change content mix because they're easier to make and answer quick questions. - vidIQ's channel sees shorts dominating search and outperforming long-form for fast how-to answers. Transcript: Dan I mean, YouTube's done a lot of work trying to get people excited about YouTube Shorts. That is going to bring in a new bunch of creators who see that as an opportunity, whether they don't feel like they have the skills to make long form videos or we're just never interested In making long form videos. We certainly know playing people who are not interested in making shorts. It can definitely go the other way. So the content on YouTube is going to start to change and as YouTube changes as a platform. So it makes sense that there's going to be a short shelf on your home feed where there could be long form videos. You can also tell YouTube directly, I don't want to see as many shorts as you're showing me, which I tested recently on my phone, nervous that it was going to take away all of my shorts. And for that first five minutes, it did. I couldn't, I hit, I'm not interested because what it did, I don't know if you've seen this on your phone you know how the shorts it'll show you two side by side you scroll and there's two More and there's okay so i used to only get one shelf worth of shorts then i got two shelves worth of shorts and finally they brought me to three i had to scroll past three short shelves before I saw a long form video and that's when i hit the button and said you're showing me too many shorts and so for the first five minutes after hitting that, I couldn't find any. And I'm like, wait, I watched some of these. And so I had to refresh a few times and they came back. And now, and I don't know if this will start to tip back the other way, but for now it shows me one short shelf and then I can scroll through some long form before seeing another. And that's me just trying to teach YouTube that I watch some shorts creators it's cool to show me their videos when they pop up but i also watch long form people and i want to see them too And it's going to continue being weird and confusing and the only thing we really have to go on is like the data that youtube presents us and luckily our channel like the main vidiq channel And we have the podcast channel now like we get a lot of interesting data points and from our own data our shorts are doing very very well and our long form videos not as much as they used To that could be for a number of reasons but and I don't want to I'm about to jump topics here um I think a lot of it has to do with just regular user demand and things shifting whereby we teach People a lot of things about YouTube and those things are searchable. And we started before shorts doing searchable content and now we're continuing to do that. But shorts are dominating search. So for vidIQ, it makes sense that our shorts would do very, very well and our long form wouldn't do as well because we're just answering questions really fast with shorts and people like Quick answers for an entertainment channel. They might try shorts and people are like, I don't get it, you know, but the long form videos do really well. It's, it's just so different depending on who you're ([Time 0:09:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2bce6445-89b0-4c72-b00b-642d9bcbea08)) - **Match Format To Niche Demand** - Learn your niche and whether viewers expect short, long, or live formats before pivoting. - Ask: do live streams or short explainers actually fit your topic and audience intent? Transcript: Travis There's going to be some niches where there's almost no short form creators in that niche because you want to actually have more time with the subject, whatever it is, right? And then there'll be the exact opposite where there'll be some niches where there's almost no long form, lots of short form, and then there'll be niches where it's a good mix of both. So you should understand your niche and be the expert there. One thing I've always said, I'll say it again, no matter how many people I've ever coached in, you know, on YouTube, I've always told them, you are the subject matter expert in your niche. You know more about it than I do. I just understand humans and we can put those two things together and win, right? So you know what your viewers are looking for, at least people that like the same things you do. You should know that. If you don't, that's the first thing you need to learn. What are they looking for, right? And because of that, you should also know what type of content works for your niche. So if you're saying, well, should I try live streams? The answer I'm always going to give you is do live streams work in your niche? Is that something people want to watch a live stream of? Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes the answer is no. ([Time 0:15:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/260ab540-7d69-48ce-971d-48ebce7a9a68)) - **Quick Shorts Win Technical Searches** - Dan shares searching for quick software fixes where a 30s short beat a 6-minute tutorial. - He highlights viewer preference for fast answers over long, unfocused tutorials. Transcript: Dan And I'm like this too. I will look up questions all the time. And if I see a short that just on the surface looks like it's going to do a good job, I will tap on that before I'll sit through like a six-minute tutorial or something. Also, like a lot of times, depending on especially in like the kind of software space, if I'm looking for some answer to some technical question about Windows or something, I can't even Tell you how many long form videos have burned me in the past because it's it's just loud music with like copyright music with text on the screen or they'll open up a notepad because they Just do not want to talk in a microphone. And they're trying to explain a problem in in way too much time and then right next to that will be a short with someone who's talking and it'll be 30 seconds and they're like okay if you Want to turn off copilot on microsoft just click here here here here here i'm like thank you that's all i wanted that's this how things are right now and i think people overall value their Time. And that is kind of what we as YouTubers need to kind of respect is, hey, like you're competing against people who are someone out there is going to help people get to their answer faster In less time. ([Time 0:16:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9b268b14-aaf7-41c5-a905-50a20b4210b3)) - **Test For New Audiences Carefully** - If you want a different audience, test formats but expect trade-offs with your current viewers. - Consider separate series or channels to avoid alienating your core audience. Transcript: Travis Long time lurker but never emailed. I make earth science educational videos and I monetize at about 9,000 subs. My main goal is just education and making enough to cover expenses. No intention of giving up the day job. Content is either outdoor walks and info or video essays under 15 minutes. My long-form audience is very narrow. It is normally 98% men over 45 in the US and UK. Short form is 80% male and fit and split fairly equal across all ages. So I know that I can find how I know others can find me. I really appreciate these lovely lads, but would love to broaden my audience to maybe include students, crystal girlies, and younger adults that are generally interested in nature, Et cetera, who may like this field, but don't realize it yet. I'm a 20 something woman myself. And so these are literally my people. I'm really struggling to hit these audiences despite rebranding my thumbnails, et cetera. I've spoken to other creators up to 300 K subs in my niche and adjacent niches. And we all have similar audience analytics. Is it a lost cause because we all seem to have the same issue? Or is there something I could do to hook a young audience? Because I exist. Any tips are welcome. ([Time 0:20:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/23270ef1-a70b-43d3-9010-c2d249ee28fc)) - **Mixed Topics Generate Mixed Results** - Lance describes a 10-year channel with mixed content where certain adult interviews drive clicks but short watch time. - Travis and Dan point out inconsistent content yields inconsistent performance and recommend focusing. Transcript: Travis All right. My channel is 10 years old. It has never come close to 4000 watch hours time requirement. I started an irregular trend with my videos a few years ago. What seemed to boost, what seemed like a boost actually might be a burden. I desperately seek vidIQ's advice. The majority of my channel has reaction videos to trailers for games and movies. Sometimes I will do an editorial review about professional wrestling films and politics. I'm a middle-aged dude that genuinely loves Paw Patrol as much as Resident Evil. So I do my best to keep my videos safe for all viewers. I occasionally attend an adult entertainment convention in my state. I will briefly interview my favorite stars and post the videos on my channel. Even though they're adult entertainers, the interviews are fairly clean cut. I mark them as age restricted because of YouTube requirements instead of what is featured on screen. I wonder if this has caused a problem for my channel's health. The mature videos get a lot of clicks and subscriber boosts, but for very brief watch times. One of the interviews is five years old, but consistently is within the top three spots. If I post a new video about my usual topics, then that video might get number one or number two spots for a few days. Then the adult interviews are right back to the lead positions. After 10 years of time, money, effort, and struggle, I feel like the only option is to start completely fresh and hope for the best. Please, please, please advise. Thank you. That's from Lance. And I think this just comes back to something that we talk about very often on this channel, which is audience, audience, audience. Like who are you making your content for? And when someone comes to your channel and is recommending content for your channel, what are they getting and what are they expecting the next time they come? And I think that there's a huge disconnect with what you just said. You have a channel that is basically about you and everything you like. So that channel is for you. Done. If you want a channel for other people, you've got to do things in a consistent manner so they know what they're getting every time they come. If I come and I like to watch your reviews about like movies, probably not gonna watch the adult interview stuff if i'm into the interview stuff might not care about your thoughts on paw Patrol i i really hope that i don't care about the i really hope that i'm not interested in that so i feel like you just have to understand that like when you put out random types of content You will get random types of performance that's just the way it always has been and the way it always will be. You're not going to get consistent performance with inconsistent content. ([Time 0:28:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0ed1bef2-3e0a-4115-a0a9-202be74f6dc5)) - **Be Something To Someone** - Pick a focus and speak to one clear viewer persona to help your channel snowball. - If variety is essential, separate topics into playlists or distinct channels to keep signals clear. Transcript: Travis Want to talk about the reality of variety content. The reality of variety content is kind of like what I said earlier. If you put out variety content, you will get variety views. Like you're going to have a variety of views and not all going to be great. And some people will say, well, but I know this one YouTuber who does all types of stuff and he gets all types of views. Well, there's like two, two answers to that. Number one, and this is going to be the most common answer to that, which is what you think is successful is probably not what they think is successful. And I keep going back to this one content creator. I remember a while back that I was watching one of his videos. He had a series of videos I really enjoyed. He said he doesn't do them anymore because they don't perform well. When I went to look back at them, all of them had 100,000 views. And for me and you, that's like, oh, that's great. That's performing well. But for him, it's not. So that's relative, right? Performance is relative. And just because you think it performs well doesn't mean the creator does. And secondarily, in the times that even those things do perform well, it's because the content creators figured out a way for them to be the niche. And it's more interesting to find out what their take is about the subject more so more so than the subject. The vast majority of YouTubers are watched because of the subject, not because of them. There's a small percentage of people that people are watched just for them and their take on something. We should all be so lucky to be that person, and we won't be. It's just not going to be the thing. You can be one of the most talented Pokemon creators on YouTube, but that might be it. People might not watch you for anything else. So the reality of variety content is it's very difficult to be the niche, to become the niche, and it's actually unlikely that most people listening to this will be that, including myself. ([Time 0:34:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a94b7a3a-d733-4fa4-bff2-ca462161bd56)) - **Separate Shorts If They Distort Data** - If shorts hurt your long-form growth, try separating them to a shorts-only channel and watch data. - Prioritize the format you care about and measure results rather than follow blanket rules. Transcript: Travis Hey, Travis and the gang. I love watching, listening to you guys because I learned so much while I laugh. Oh, well, that's great. I hope you laugh for the right reasons. All right. I have a relatively new channel that started in September of 24. I followed the trend of creating a long form weekly and then uploading shorts to pull in subscribers every other day. Then I hit a problem. I noticed that the earlier long form began to get views. However, all of a sudden, I was getting thousands of views on my shorts. And then in like 50 to 100 on my long form, I was thinking no one liked my video. So I experimented by stopping posting shorts. Then my long forms began to grow slowly and get views again. A long form video I posted four weeks ago now has 3200 views and is still growing 41 subs also. Wow, I was so blown away. So I have come to the conclusion that shorts on a new channel messes it up, in my opinion. Now I'm getting a steady stream of subs who are not unsubbing. I've created a shorts-only channel to cater to my shorts-only audience because I hear other creators are split on how shorts negatively impact your small channel if you're aiming To drive long form. What are your thoughts on this for small channels and what are the deals pushing shorts instead of long for so we kind of talked a little bit about this earlier but i do want to say that when Shorts first came out this was the the common um advice start a new channel for shorts but we were hardcore on that we were we were telling people even that and i've softened a little bit Over it on it over the last year because youtube has done a better job of that. However, with the things we talked about at the beginning of this podcast, I'm starting to also now see that maybe going back to that is, is the right move. Because YouTube, even though they should be looking at viewers separately, like, you know, you like Travis's short form versus long form, let me get it to the right people. Doesn't always seem to come out that way. So for what this creator is saying, for smaller channels, is it even more critical, Dan, to separate these two? What do you think? Dan It's so, like, difficult. Like, so I don't know if channel size really ever matters in conversations like this. So I'm putting it aside for a second. My experience is going to be a little different than yours because I'm talking about channels that have either millions or tens of thousands of subscribers. On vidIQ, we mentioned earlier that our shorts are doing better than a long form. But in order for me to definitively say, therefore, shorts bad if we want long form to do well, I have to be able to look on the channel and see that all of our long form videos are underperforming. However, I just posted my big gaming video that I do every year and it is performing just fine. It's doing what I was expecting it to do. The numbers are great. They are growing. It is snowballing. It is falling into search. Exactly what I want to have happen with it is happening. And we're posting shorts more than ever. So because I'm having that experience, it kind of busts the entire idea that someone would say, well, shorts hurts your long form. But then again, again, a little bit jaded. I'm on a larger channel talking about this on my personal channel. My priority was live stream, take clips from the stream, turn them into shorts, do long form when I have time. But lately I've started to prioritize doing long form again because I just want to see what would happen. You know, like what's going to happen. And those long form videos are doing really, really well. I'm not posting shorts right now and I'm live streaming when I have time. And you would think, well, okay, cool. Your opinion should be that your shorts were hurting your long form performance, but keep in mind, what I'm saying is my personal like time and priorities just shifted. My, my focus shifted. So I was focused on making shorts that were really funny and compelling from clips of my streams. Once I stopped focusing on that and started focusing on my writing of long form content, then those started to perform. And I stopped doing shorts, not because I thought they were bad, but because I didn't give myself enough time to do them because I have a full-time job. Like I'm doing my channel for fun as a hobby on the side. So it's kind of like, I feel like I get what I put into it. And if I had all the time in the world to make shorts, do live streams and do long form videos, I would do all three. And I'd love to see how that would do. Um, but to me, like the bottom line is that shorts viewers be shorts viewers, long form be long form. There is crossover, but there's also an entire generation of people who prefer vertical short form content. And there's generations of people who came before them who like their long form. Again, there is crossover, but, and, and sometimes people, it's just a mood for me. I do like shorts. If I'm, if I'm like standing around waiting for the phone call I'm waiting for or something, watching a few shorts while I'm waiting for my phone to ring super easy I can get a quick dopamine Hit if I'm sitting in front of my tv I'm watching a long form video and it better be a long one so I don't have to keep changing the channel right so it is really like it just depends on where People are and who people are and I think what you're finding and I'm not I don't have your channel in front of me maybe your data is way more compelling than I'm making it sound but I think What you're finding is that when you put the time and energy into making sure your long form videos are doing really well, and you take shorts and just put them out of your mind, just forget About this for now. You're getting what you put into it. You're reaping what you've sown, which is like, I did a really good job making this long form video and it's performing and people see my passion and everything else. When you're splitting your focus between shorts and longs, you're on two different platforms effectively, which is always difficult to do, especially if you have school or work or Other things that demand your time. We only have so much creative energy, I think, as individuals. So I think that's what's going on when people say this. But again, I have to put a big couple of caveats on it. I'm on larger channels than that sounds like the ones we're talking about here. And also, like, I don't have this person data in front of me. That's my soapbox. I will step off of it now. Travis I love that. And I think you should take all that into consideration, but also honor what you're seeing happen on your channel. If you feel like you're doing this thing and it's making it go better for your long form, continue to do that thing. Don't change back just because we've said something, but just acknowledge that there are a lot of different worlds where all this stuff is true simultaneously and just on different Channels, which is kind of the unfortunate thing. There is no like one answer. YouTube will tell you, put it all on one channel. Now we figured it out. Dan We might tell you, well, I mean, sometimes they got to figure it out yeah i think the reason it's easy to like look at a new channel and say i'm gonna make this my shorts channel and this my Long-form channel is because it separates the data like we that's why we have the podcast channel because now we get way more accurate data about how long people are watching specifically The podcast because that's the only thing that's here and shorts about the podcast yes whereas before it was like let's do the podcast on the main channel. Okay. It's getting some views, but like relative to the other content, it's not. And it's confusing. It's just confounding. ([Time 0:41:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/438578bd-8905-49cf-acdf-f11817bb927d)) - **Separate Channels Clarify Data** - Splitting content into dedicated channels clarifies analytics and decision-making. - vidIQ created separate channels (podcast vs main) to get accurate format-specific data. Transcript: Dan We might tell you, well, I mean, sometimes they got to figure it out yeah i think the reason it's easy to like look at a new channel and say i'm gonna make this my shorts channel and this my Long-form channel is because it separates the data like we that's why we have the podcast channel because now we get way more accurate data about how long people are watching specifically The podcast because that's the only thing that's here and shorts about the podcast yes whereas before it was like let's do the podcast on the main channel. Okay. It's getting some views, but like relative to the other content, it's not. And it's confusing. It's just confounding. Maybe both do work just fine, but it's hard to make decisions based off the data when you're doing two totally separate things in one place. ([Time 0:47:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c6b36d3d-35ff-4a88-8ba4-9d02534948bd))