YouTube and the Death of Short-Form Video

• The YouTube Screening Room  will introduce four new high-quality films every two weeks. Three of the first four titles are longer than the usual 10 minute YouTube fare and YouTube pledges to offer feature-length films from time to time.
• YouTube Annotations allows the rest of us to create long-form video by inserting hypertext links into any short video to provide one click access to another sequence in a story.
• According to Silicon Valley Insider YouTube has also sent the following memo to YouTube partners:
  "You now will be able to upload and monetize videos in your account that are longer than 10 minutes. This feature is exclusively for partners. Independent Film makers that partner with us will now be able to upload their feature films on our site. Please note that for long form content, the maximum file size is 1GB."
  

Truth be told, YouTube has always offered some long form material, but the arrival of The Screening Room has fostered a great deal of interesting and heated discussion about the relative merits of long and short Internet video.

Check out these posts by two the world's most famous bloggers.

Robert Scoble's  "Why YouTube is going long-form" argues that long form wins and wins big.

"Its much tougher to monetize short videos ... than it is to put ads into a long video.  Advertisers will pay much higher rates for long-form ads, because someone who watches a 30-minute video is HIGHLY ENGAGED.  They are far more likely to become a customer than someone who just watches a two-minute entertaining video."

Mark Cuban, who has long argued that Google spent far too much for YouTube, agrees with Scoble that long form is where the money is at in his post "Hulu is Kicking YouTube's Ass". Cuban knows that YouTube serves up ten times more video than anyone else. Who cares! He argues that serving up all those feeds costs Google millions but  brings in pennies. Mark feels the real 100 pound gorilla is the on-line world is Hulu.com not YouTube.

"Hulu isn't ... even remotely close in number of total users or videos served. But Hulu ... is laughing at YouTube all the way to bank."  He argues that it's not just that Hulu makes money and YouTube doesn't, it's that Hulu uses YouTube’s free pipelines to run no cost advertising that makes Hulu even richer.

Is all this ragging on YouTube fair?  My take is that this depends on what you are trying to do.   

Even if you are a huge fan of YouTube shorts, you have to admit that Google is going to have to make lots of tweaks if it is ever going to make YouTube profitable.  Google understands this and is working on the transformation. Screening Room is a reasonable first step to start competing with products like Hulu.  YouTube Annotations provides new capabilities that will make YouTube a more viable business tool.   I expect more changes soon.

In the meantime, small businesses should take more advantage of all the free services that YouTube already provides. Just look at how companies like Blentec have used short- form YouTube video to drum up business and you have got to be a believer.  Blentec proves that it’s not the length of the video that is important, it is how well that video serves its target audience!  Christopher Coulter has a lot to say about this in the comment section of Scoble’s blog post::

"There are so many variables here, that seeking validation just on account of length, is crazy...  TV shows are the same length. Some succeed and some don't. When's the last time you heard of a show becoming a hit because of how LONG it was? Long form doesn't always work, (esp. given the short-attention span web audiences) nor does short form in any way guarantee a connected audience.

Here's where (Scoble's argument) breaks down, the MORE engaged, the less tolerant the audience is going to be with blubber, so (Scoble's) argument really backfires."

I agree with Coulter that Longer is not necessarily better!  Scoble and Cuban are right that It is much harder to monetize short video.   But this argument ignores the fact that Not everybody is trying to make money selling the videos they produce.  Companies that make training  videos can reduce support costs. Companies that create viral ad campaigns can sell new products. Companies that create product walkthroughs can help customers pick the right product and reduce product return. Executives who create video fireside chats for employees  can foster a sense of  connection with employees they will never meet fact to face.   You don't make money selling these sorts of videos, but they can be of vital importance to helping a business grow.  To often the argument about  monetization ignores the fact that there is more than one way to make money. Sometimes a short video is the right video to get a job done.