YouTube Shorts hits 15 billion daily video views, growing 131 pc since March

Google parent Alphabet turned a stunning quarter, posting revenues of $61.9 billion and net income $18.5 billion in the April-to-June period.

Much of the growth was driven by Google's search division and YouTube. The latter reported revenues of $7 billion, registering a year-on-year growth of 84 percent.

More interestingly, YouTube Shorts, the video streaming platform's TikTok rival that launched in September 2020, has recorded a sharp growth.

YouTube Shorts, which was an India-first offering, has surpassed 15 billion daily views globally, growing 131 percent from 6.5 billion daily views recorded at the end of the March quarter, Google stated.

Earlier in January, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki stated in a blog post that Shorts was recording 3.5 billion daily views in India alone.

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Contrast this with TikTok, which recorded average monthly video views of 17 billion in 2020, according to 99Firms, an online marketing agency. TikTok users spend 850 minutes per month on the app, as per a separate study by Influencer Marketing Hub.

Similar to TikTok, YouTube Shorts features a multi-segment camera (to string multiple video clips together), record with music (from a large library of songs that will keep growing), speed controls (that give users the flexibility to be more creative) and a timer and a countdown (to easily record hands-free on the smartphone).

YouTube had earlier detailed how Shorts video views are counted. "They are counted the same way as for regular videos, so they also contribute to your channel-level view count and don't get filtered out in any way," it had explained.

Content creators can track their view count on the 'Reach' panel on YouTube Studio. "The global shift to online video and streaming continues. [Google is] at the forefront of this," Google's Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler said in the earnings call,

Earlier in May, YouTube had announced a $100 million YouTube Shorts Fund to enable monetisation and rewards for top content creators in 2021-22.

"Anyone is eligible to participate in the fund simply by creating unique Shorts on the YouTube platform," Amy Singer, Director, Global Partnership Enablement for YouTube Shorts, stated in a blog.

YouTube also plans to roll out ad monetisation on Shorts as it expands to new markets.