The Return to Long-Form: Why YouTube Is Winning Back Brands

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.”