Countertrend: Long-form video consumption growing on YouTube

As short-form videos dominate smartphones and attention spans shrink, YouTube is seeing a surprising countertrend in India: surging consumption of long-form videos on connected TVs.

- Lata Jha

As short-form videos dominate smartphones and attention spans shrink, YouTube is seeing a surprising countertrend in India: surging consumption of long-form videos on connected TVs. This unexpected shift, executives say, is helping turn the world's largest open video platform into the country's biggest over-the-top (OTT) service in living rooms.

"While Shorts is growing, the consumption of content longer than 20 minutes on YouTube is actually also growing tremendously," said Gautam Anand, vice-president and managing director, YouTube Asia Pacific at Google. "As a platform, we historically went from PC to mobile and now, the fastest-growing surface for us is the living room."