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Some veteran YouTube staff think Shorts might ruin YouTube

Some veteran YouTube staff think Shorts might ruin YouTube

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Instead of just fighting TikTok, fueling the short video trend could undermine YouTube’s existing ad business.

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Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Senior YouTube staffers are reportedly worried that its TikTok competitor, Shorts, may eat away at its long-form content, which has for almost two decades been its primary bread and butter, according to The Financial Times. As FT points out, YouTube’s ad revenue, though recently improved, had been on a downward year-over-year slide for three straight quarters.

YouTube is still figuring out how to reap more ad money from Shorts. Its long-form content lets it show more ads per video, but as short-form content gradually takes over, content creators themselves are uploading fewer long videos, FT writes, citing YouTube staff fretting about internal figures.

But whether YouTube’s senior staffers like it or not, YouTube has to support Shorts as it gains popularity. Keeping up with that means adding features like AI summaries and NFL highlights, and even making compromises elsewhere in Google’s business to keep other industries happy and supportive of the service. It also means investing in Shorts’ creators and incentivizing them to make exclusive content for YouTube’s service.