In an endless race for relevance, since the short-form video boom of the early 2020s, brands and consumers have been stuck in an endless scroll. With fast trends, faster edits and even faster algorithms, for years, brands chased virality across TikTok and Instagram, while creators were pushed toward increasingly relentless production cycles. Now, the industry is beginning to shift once again.

As audience behavior fragments and creators grow wary of building followings entirely dependent on algorithmic reach, YouTube is reasserting itself as a key player. Over 2.7 billion people worldwide use YouTube every month, making it the world’s second most-visited platform or website, after Google. However, despite these staggering user numbers, brands have in recent years diverted investment toward short-form content on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, the latter of which now represents nearly 40% of digital ad spend.

In 2024, though, research by social and influencer marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy found that 70% of marketers were planning to increase production of long-form creator content looking ahead. Coach, for instance, has experimented with episodic “Story Sessions” that extend its brand world beyond seasonal campaigns into conversational, interview-led formats with the likes of Olympic gymnast Sunisa Lee and track and field athlete Tara Davis-Woodhall. Chanel, meanwhile, has leaned into behind-the-scenes documentary-style content, including BTS films from its handbag campaigns and runway productions. Similarly, Nike has increasingly used YouTube to distribute long-form athlete storytelling in the last 12 months, such as following American long-distance runner Grant Fisher’s first NYC half marathon and documenting 800m gold medalist Keely Hodgkinson’s post-injury comeback. Across these videos, engagement typically ranges from 50,000 to two million views.

“Brands simply follow where consumer attention is and adapt to changing consumer behavior. A rise in YouTube consumption on TV and a rejection of passive scrolling habits in favor of more intentional media consumption has helped prompt rising brand investment in long-form,” says Thomas Walters, chief innovation officer at Billion Dollar Boy. Other platforms are taking note: earlier this year, Instagram rolled out 20-minute reels, while TikTok introduced 60-minute uploads.

But YouTube remains the primary long-form video player. According to research conducted by Vogue Business and youth culture agency Archrival last year, 88% of Gen Zs and millennials use YouTube to find or discover new products. This influence extends to younger cohorts as well, with research from GWI suggesting that up to 78% of Gen Alphas use YouTube regularly, making it the dominant video platform in their media diet. As a result, YouTube plays an increasingly central role across the early purchase journey, with younger audiences using it not only for entertainment, but also for product discovery and decision-making.

“All big creators today are multi-platform by default, but we definitely see YouTube as the crown jewel of the media portfolio,” says Taylor Kelly, chief strategy officer at Night Media, which manages talent like Kai Cenat, Hasan Piker, the Kalogeras Sisters, and YouTube’s biggest creator, MrBeast, from 2018 to 2024. “[YouTube] have a dedicated partnerships team that’s very responsive, they bring brand opportunities directly to talent, and YouTube brand deals are usually bigger on a per-deal basis.”

YouTube argues that advantage comes from the scale of its creator ecosystem, as well as its long-standing revenue-sharing model. “We’ve been paying creators for 20 years, and we have a YouTube partner program, where we pay a revenue share to creators based on every ad we sell, and over the last four years we’ve paid out over $100 billion to over three million creators,” says Brian Albert, managing director of YouTube media partnerships and creative works. “There’s no platform on planet Earth that has invested in the creator economy to the same extent that we have, and that has really uplifted our creators as the new Hollywood, because they built these incredibly passionate communities who seek them out and reliably tune in again and again.”

The shift is changing how brands approach creator partnership. Coach’s partnership with literary creator Haley Pham marked one of YouTube’s earliest, large-scale integrated creator campaigns, a deal that had reportedly been in development for more than two years. “Coach ran a takeover on Haley’s channel, which meant they had a very high share of voice on every ad running before and during any of her videos for a period of time,” continues Albert. The results speak for themselves: Coach saw a 60% increase in global top-of-mind awareness among Gen Z, a sixfold increase in consideration, and a sustained acceleration in Gen Z acquisition in a single quarter tied to the Explore Your Story campaign, which drove more than 15 million organic engagements and over 400,000 user-generated posts. The company now allocates more than half of its media investment to YouTube and Google.

The return to long-form

Rather than replacing short-form video, creators are increasingly using the two formats in tandem: short-form as discovery; long-form as retention. As attention becomes harder to sustain on algorithm-driven feeds, creators are treating TikTok and Instagram Reels as audience acquisition tools, while YouTube becomes the destination for deeper engagement, loyalty, and increased monetization. “A lot of creators see short-form as the discovery layer. They want to funnel that audience somewhere else where they have more control,” says Kelly. “Short-form audiences aren’t very loyal. It’s almost like a gladiator arena, where creators are constantly competing for attention in the same feed.”

Moreover, while short-form rewards speed and volume, creators argue that long-form allows for more ambitious storytelling and sustainable production cycles. “It’s really hard to be highly creative in short-form,” continues Kelly. “The creative potential of long-form as a format is much stronger. You also step off that treadmill of constantly asking, ‘How do I go viral today?’ That’s a difficult position to be in as a short-form-only creator. Eventually, you can run out of ideas or momentum.”

This shift is also being recognized for brands. For Explore Your Story, Coach CMO Joon Silverstein explains how the campaign was built around purpose-driven, long-form creative that was designed specifically for YouTube, with cinematic, emotionally grounded films introducing the world of the campaign. The decision reflected a broader reassessment of traditional marketing logic. “We were operating inside a model that had stopped working — optimize performance, chase efficiency, drive loyalty, and treat brand as the garnish,” Silverstein says. “But you can’t optimize your way into desire. And without desire, recognition becomes a fading asset.”

Instead, the focus went from retention to relevance. “We stopped treating performance as the engine of growth — because performance reflects demand, it doesn’t create it,” she says. “YouTube allows us to go deeper. It’s a more intentional environment, where audiences are open to long-form storytelling, returning to creators they trust, and engaging in a more sustained way. In a world of short-form everything, that depth becomes incredibly powerful.”

Underlying the shift is a broader recalibration around fandom and influence. “My core view is that fandom is a function of time spent with a person,” says Night Media’s Kelly. “You can feel this even in your own life — the friends you spend the most time with are the ones you’re closest to. So if someone is watching 30 minutes of a YouTube video twice a week, versus seeing five or six short-form clips that add up to maybe three minutes total, that’s a huge difference,” he adds. “Depth of community drives conversion and real influence. Looking at viewership alone is very surface level. Viewership multiplied by duration is what really matters.”

Influencer and model Lola Rose Thompson, who has worked with brands including L’Oréal Paris, Oh Polly and Swarovski, has been active on Instagram and TikTok since 2020, but only began posting on YouTube in 2024. Despite YouTube representing her lowest follower count, she says it has already delivered the strongest audience connection. “Even though it’s probably my platform with the least amount of followers, I feel like I get the most recognition from [YouTube]. Girls will come up to me and say they watch my content there, whereas on Instagram and TikTok, it’s more of a crowd,” Thompson explains. That deeper investment can also translate to stronger audience sentiment. “It’s harder for people to be mean when they watch a long video of you, because they feel like they really know you.”

Why is YouTube such an effective channel for brands?

YouTube audiences tend to be more intentional with their time on the platform, says Billion Dollar Boy’s Walters. “There’s generally less scrolling behavior, and more mid-funnel behavior; they’re researching, comparing, and validating decisions,” he explains. “That shifts product discovery from passive exposure to active consideration.”

That behavior gives YouTube a different commercial dynamic from most social platforms. Videos continue generating views long after publication, allowing brand integrations to compound, rather than disappearing after a 24-hour spike. “Long-form content generally has a long effectiveness tail,” Walters adds. “Recent research shows that around 38% of views happen after the first 30 days, so a single brand integration builds over time.”

That extended lifespan has become one of YouTube’s biggest advantages over traditional advertising. In a leaked internal memo, verified by Business Insider and Fortune, YouTube creator MrBeast wrote that one sponsor claimed a campaign delivered “1.7x the return” of an NFL championship game ad, because, unlike a television spot, the video continued generating views and customer conversions long after launch.

The structure of long-form content also allows brands to communicate with more nuance. “On YouTube, viewers are already invested, so even if some skip ahead, the likelihood of completely ignoring the message is much lower,” says Kelly, noting that ads usually get a 60-second or 90-second segment, allowing for a much clearer message.

“YouTube is also kind of the original platform,” he explains. “TikTok had its post-Covid boom, and Instagram wasn’t originally built for creators in the same way. But with YouTube, audiences have always understood that brand sponsorships are what make the content possible. There’s a more welcoming attitude toward ads. Viewers feel like, ‘This brand is supporting my favorite creator, so I get this video.’ You don’t get that same feeling with a fully sponsored TikTok or a standalone Instagram ad, where it can feel like the whole thing is an ad.”

Importantly, creators say those integrations also feel more natural within long-form content. “I might post an ad for something I genuinely love and use all the time. But in short-form content, it’s hard for it not to seem like an ad, since I only have one minute to incorporate it. Whereas on YouTube, I can implement it organically throughout my day and how I actually use it,” says Thompson. It also increases the surface area of the creator in which brands can tap into. “I also started talking about gut health [on YouTube], which people were really interested in and that’s harder to communicate on something like TikTok or Instagram.”

Behind the scenes, YouTube says creator-brand matchmaking is increasingly becoming both data-driven and relationship-led. “Our process is really twofold. It’s got to be art and science,” says Albert. “On the science side, we’ve enabled third-party SaaS platforms and creator marketing agencies to tap into an API [application programming interface] to facilitate matchmaking based on which creators best fit a brand’s needs.”

That process increasingly goes beyond surface-level metrics such as follower counts or engagement rates. YouTube says its tools can identify creators already organically mentioning brands or integrating products naturally into their content, helping advertisers find the right fit. At the same time, the platform works closely with creators, discussing the brands they already use or feel connected to. That relationship-led approach became central to Coach’s partnership with creator Pham. According to Albert, YouTube was able to surface an older video in which Pham shared memories of shopping for Coach bags with her mother — giving the brand an existing emotional connection to build the campaign around.

As major advertisers scale creator investment, YouTube argues this blend of technology, storytelling, and audience trust is what separates the platform from the broader creator economy. “Clients like Unilever have gone on record saying they want to work with tens of thousands of creators, not just a single creator,” says Albert, adding that software like this enables connection with more micro-creators. “That’s where the ecosystem is heading.”