What is YouTube Shorts?
YouTube Shorts is YouTube's answer to TikTok and Instagram Reels. Because YouTube's algorithm is already built around finding relevant and organic content tailored to each individual user, you as an advertiser can achieve enormous reach in a relatively short time — particularly among younger audiences, who are very active on YouTube.
YouTube Shorts can be up to 60 seconds long, are optimised for mobile viewing and offer vertical video playback, making it easy and enjoyable for users to watch content on their smartphones.
Here are the key aspects of YouTube Shorts:
- Large and growing user base: With over 4.5 million Danish users, the platform offers massive reach.
- Increased engagement: Short video formats like YouTube Shorts tend to achieve higher engagement rates compared to longer videos.
What advertising opportunities does YouTube Shorts offer?
In 2023, it became possible to advertise in the YouTube Shorts feed via Google Ads — with the following formats available:
- First Position on Shorts: The ad is shown to the target audience as the first ad the user sees when they open YouTube Shorts.
- Skippable In-Stream Ads: These ads can be skipped after 5 seconds and are well suited to driving engagement and actions such as views or website visits. You only pay when a user watches at least 30 seconds of your ad or interacts with it.
- Non-Skippable In-Stream Ads: Although typically used in longer video formats, these ads can also be part of broader campaign strategies that intersect with Shorts viewing. These ads must be watched before the viewer can see the desired video and can last up to 15 or 20 seconds.
- In-Feed Video Ads: Adding in-feed video ads to YouTube Shorts through Video Reach campaigns, which use Google's AI to optimise advertising and reach by showing ads where they are most likely to achieve the highest engagement.
- Bumper Ads: Short, non-skippable video ads of up to 6 seconds, designed to reach a broad audience and increase brand awareness. These can also complement the Shorts experience by being concise and impactful.
- Video Action Campaigns: These campaigns integrate ads across YouTube and other Google video partners to maximise actions such as app installations or purchases. These ads are also shown in the Shorts feed.
Repurpose Content from Instagram Reels and TikTok
The algorithm in YouTube Shorts closely resembles the algorithms on Meta and TikTok — the higher the engagement, the greater the reach. This is why it also makes sense to consider repurposing content from these platforms for YouTube Shorts.
We ran a test together with one of our clients, who had already surpassed 100,000 followers on TikTok and therefore had plenty of content suited to the YouTube Shorts format.
In the experiment, we uploaded one of their best-performing TikTok videos, and within 2 hours the video achieved a staggering:
- 40,000 views
- 589 likes
The case above speaks for itself — so if you already have a strong foothold with your target audience on TikTok or Instagram Reels, repurpose that video content and get started with YouTube Shorts today.
