đŸ§Ș TikTok vs YouTube

The surprising data behind the short-form vs long-form debate.

Author

Isaac Peiris
April 08, 2025

Read time: 4 mins | Read online

The TikTok-ification of every social platform has well and truly set in.

Short-form video is eating everything.

Or is it?

I wanted to find out why vertical short-form video is booming, and what it means for content businesses.

Hope you enjoy!

— Isaac

Quick Hits

  • OpenAI’s Studio Ghibli-style images renew the debate over AI and copyright [Fast Company]

  • State of Video Report: Video Marketing Statistics for 2025 [Wistia]

  • Coca-Cola brings back ‘Share a Coke’ for Gen Z [Linkedin]

  • The best and worst April Fools 2025 brand plays [The Verge]

  • Podcast super-fans are super spenders [Audacy]

TikTok vs YouTube

It's no secret that short-form vertical video has taken over. TikTok exploded onto the scene. Instagram scrambled to launch Reels. YouTube introduced Shorts. Even LinkedIn pushed (then retired) its own dedicated vertical video feed.

But the question I wondered was why now?

We've had social media video for over 15 years. Our attention spans have been progressively shrinking for decades (now down to just 8.25 seconds from 12 seconds in 2000). But it's only in the last few years that short-form vertical video has conquered every platform and transformed the content landscape.

What’s your avg daily screentime? Be honest!

The numbers tell a pretty compelling story.

  • Users spend an average of 58 minutes daily on TikTok, more than 2x the time spent in 2019.

  • In Australia we're even more addicted, spending nearly 30 hours monthly on TikTok alone (20% above the global average).

  • Meanwhile, TikTok accounts for a massive 32% of total social media time among US users, outpacing both Facebook and Instagram at about 20% each.

I wanted to know what changed, and what it means for the future of media and marketing.

What I found was it all comes down to two major shifts in the context we consume content in.

1. Time

20 years ago, most people had dedicated routines around content consumption.

The evening news at 6pm. The Sunday paper with morning coffee. The weekly magazine delivery. There were planned, deliberate content consumption moments built into our daily and weekly routines.

Now content consumption happens in the "in-between” moments. The few minutes while waiting for your coffee order, the 60 seconds in the lift, or the 20 minute bus ride to work.

Content consumption has become:

  • Unplanned

  • Inconsistent

  • Highly distractible

  • Squeezed into gaps

Because of this context shift, content had to adapt. It needed to get shorter to fit the compressed time frames, and be more immediately engaging to capture our fractured attention.

Importantly, this isn't just about TikTok. Look at how newsletters have evolved. There’s more white space, scannable bullets, and shorter paragraphs. A lot of Podcasts offer "short episode" options alongside their full-length content.

Do you ever look around the train platform, realise you’re the only one not on your phone, and feel really smug about it? No? Just me?

The stats around engagement show why this shift is so attractive for content producers. Short-form videos are 2.5 times more engaging than long-form videos, with 50% higher viewer retention rates. They're a direct response to our changing consumption habits.

2. Focus

When content consumption was a consciously planned event, it was also the primary activity. If your routine involved watching the hour-long evening news broadcast, you would actually sit for that hour and watch the news.

Now, content is normally the secondary activity. It's the apps we open while doing something else. Scrolling while waiting for the bus, watching YouTube while cooking dinner, listening to a podcast while driving.

The underlying need has shifted from "I actively want to consume information" to "I need something to pass the time or prevent boredom while I do something else".

This is why video has become the dominant medium. It's inherently more engaging at a glance than text or static images could ever be. The visual stimulation can capture partial attention in a way other formats can’t.

“Second-screening” is when people use their phone while watching TV. Even when content is the primary focus, it’s also the secondary focus!

75% of people prefer watching videos over reading text when learning about products or services. Even more telling, videos that deliver their message in the first three seconds achieve a 13% higher retention rate.

It's why we've seen an arms race of overstimulation. Brighter colours, faster cuts, provocative hooks and exaggerated expressions all being used to grab attention quickly.

An incomplete theory

For all those people who’ve been reading this whole time thinking “but I still listen to longer podcasts” I hear you, because here’s where it gets really interesting. If this theory were complete, all content would be getting shorter and more stimulating. But that's not what we're seeing.

  • Casefile is Australia's #1 podcast with nearly 1 million unique monthly listeners. Each episode typically runs 60-90 minutes (2-3x the average).

  • Avatar (2009), Avengers: Endgame (2019), and Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) are the three highest-grossing films ever made despite runtimes of over 3 hours.

  • The average length of YouTube videos (excluding Shorts) is actually increasing, up to roughly 20 minutes from around 12 minutes a few years ago.

We’re seeing content fracture into two distinct categories:

1. Quick-hit content to grab attention during the in-between moments.

2. Immersive content to explore more deeply when audiences want to engage.

The middle ground is disappearing. Content is becoming either very short or very long, with fewer "medium-length" options surviving.

What it means for you

You have to be conscious of which category every piece of content belongs in. Don't create content that sits uncomfortably in the middle, not quite quick enough for in-between moments but also not long enough for deeper engagement.

Most importantly, understand your audience's context. Are they more likely to engage with your content in those "in-between moments" or during more dedicated time? This should shape not just your content length, but your whole content strategy. Are they seeing your content on their phone on the bus, or on their TV sitting on the couch?

It’s important to know the context in which your audience is engaging with your content.

Where to from here

As these context shifts continue ramping up, I think the divide will intensify. Platforms will increasingly supporting both ultra-short and extended long-form content, with fewer options in between.

Smart brands are building content systems that can produce both types efficiently, extracting short-form gold from deeper content pieces and expanding successful short-form content into more valuable explorations.

The key isn't necessarily choosing one category over the other, it’s understanding where each piece of content fits.

A basic content repurposing engine, similar to the one we built for Clay.

Because content itself hasn't fundamentally changed. The context has.

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That’s it from me!

Until next week,
Isaac Peiris

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