YouTube Shorts hit 2 billion monthly viewing hours on TVs

Short-form vertical video, a format originally engineered for quick scrolling on smartphones, has officially conquered the living room. New internal data from YouTube reveals that users are now consuming a staggering 2 billion hours of YouTube Shorts on television screens every single month.

 The milestone highlights a dramatic paradigm shift in couch-viewing habits. Kurt Wilms, YouTube’s Senior Director of Product Management for TV, confirmed that the living room has officially become the platform's fastest-growing screen segment, News.Az reports, citing Mezha.

According to Wilms, audiences are increasingly leaning into a "lean-back" experience, opting to watch everything from long-form series and podcasts to bite-sized Shorts from the comfort of their sofas. In the United States alone, overall YouTube consumption on television sets has crossed 200 million hours per day. To capitalize on this behavior, YouTube and its parent company, Alphabet, have aggressively overhauled their big-screen architecture.

Shorts are now systematically integrated directly into TV search results, exposing users to short-form content even if they didn't intend to watch it. Furthermore, the Google TV interface recently rolled out a dedicated “Short Videos for You” row on its home screen to drive engagement even higher. Because traditional vertical videos naturally leave massive black bars on a horizontal widescreen TV, YouTube rolled out a clever interface redesign.

The updated layout utilizes that empty space to display user comments and engagement metrics right next to the video while it plays. Sarah Ali, Vice President of Product Management for YouTube Shorts, noted that the change creates a much more immersive experience for fans while unlocking an expansive new ecosystem for creators to scale their brands. The couch-viewing boom isn't restricted to short clips, either. The same data highlights a massive surge in video podcast consumption, effectively turning podcasts into the new daytime talk shows.

YouTube reported that viewers spent over 700 million hours per month watching podcasts on TV screens—a massive leap from the 400 million monthly hours recorded just a year prior.

News.Az 

By Aysel Mammadzada