YouTube Is the New Prime Time

For years, social video and television were treated as two separate worlds. One lived on the couch. The other lived in your hand. Alphabet’s Q4 2025 earnings call made it clear that those worlds have now fully collided.

YouTube is no longer competing with television, it has become it.

What Alphabet outlined was not simply strong performance or platform growth. It was a structural shift in how video is discovered, watched, and monetised. Shorts, long-form and living room viewing are no longer parallel strategies. They are now part of a single system that is redefining Prime Time.

“What we are seeing is a clear shift in how audiences enter the YouTube ecosystem. Shorts are no longer a nice-to-have format. They are the front door. Long-form then becomes the place where creators build trust, depth, and longevity. Despite the scale, it is still a massively underutilised opportunity for both brands and creators, and it is having a real moment right now,” says Lucy Ronald, Head of Talent and Strategy at Fabulate.

For creators and brands alike, this marks a turning point.

Shorts Have Rewritten the Growth Curve

The scale of YouTube Shorts is difficult to ignore. The format now delivers more than 200 billion daily views globally. In markets like the United States, YouTube has reported that Shorts are now generating more revenue per watch hour than traditional long-form video.

The long-held belief that Shorts are useful for reach but weak for monetisation no longer holds.

That shift is already playing out at creator level. Creators Taz and Alessia saw it first-hand after launching a dedicated Shorts channel in 2021.

“Even though we started this after our main channel with long-form content, the subscribers and views on our Shorts channel have blown the main out of the water,” they explain.

Despite launching years later, their Shorts channel quickly overtook their original channel in both views and subscribers. Over more than five years, their long-form channel grew to just under 6,000 subscribers. In five years, their Shorts channel surpassed 69,000 subscribers.

“We noticed within the first year how powerful Shorts were,” they say. “It became really clear how fast you can grow when Shorts are working.”

For them, Shorts were not a supporting format. They became the fastest and most scalable way to grow on YouTube.

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Discovery Now Starts With Shorts

Alphabet has also shared that creators who consistently publish both Shorts and long-form content are growing their channels 41 percent faster than those who focus on long-form alone.

This reflects a broader shift in how audiences discover creators on YouTube. Shorts have become the primary entry point, especially for non-subscribers. Long-form content then builds depth, trust, and repeat viewing.

Before Shorts, Taz and Alessia describe YouTube growth as something that needed to be actively pushed.

“The audience before Shorts felt like we were funnelling followers from other platforms to come and watch our content,” they explain. “Posting an Instagram story with a link or going live on TikTok and telling people to subscribe.”

Shorts changed that dynamic entirely.

“With Shorts, we get access to an audience who are native to the platform,” they say. “That helps us build stronger connections and keeps viewers coming back without a call to action.”

Discovery has shifted from being manual and intent-led to being algorithmic.

Shorts Unlock New and Global Audiences

Shorts have also expanded who creators can reach. Because YouTube’s recommendation engine is built on years of long-form viewing behaviour, discovery often introduces creators to audiences they would never encounter on other platforms.

For Taz and Alessia, that meant tapping into entirely new international markets.

“TikTok is banned in India, so Shorts allow us to tap into a new international audience we cannot access on other platforms,” they explain.

They also point to how YouTube’s recommendation system behaves differently to other social platforms.

“The algorithm works very differently since it’s built with so much long-form data,” they say. “We’re sure we have subscribers who would have never come across us elsewhere just based on the content they consume on each platform.”

For brands, this matters. YouTube is no longer just a social channel. It is global distribution infrastructure.

The Living Room Is Back in Play

Perhaps the most telling statistic from Alphabet’s earnings call was this. YouTube now accounts for 12.5 percent of all television viewing time in the United States.

Audiences are no longer just watching YouTube on their phones. They are scrolling Shorts and watching creators on the biggest screen in the house.

“The return of the living room is one of the most important changes we are seeing. When creators are being watched on TVs, the expectations change. This is no longer just social content. It is modern broadcast,” says Ronald.

This changes the commercial conversation. Brands are no longer buying phone time alone. They are buying Prime Time again, delivered through creators rather than broadcasters.

Vertical content is now living room content.

The Rise of the Total Video Creator

Taken together, these shifts point to a new creator model. Success on YouTube is no longer about choosing between short or long-form. It is about designing a system where each format plays a role.

Shorts drive discovery. Long-form builds loyalty. Live content deepens connection. AI supports scale and speed.

That transition is not without trade-offs. Taz and Alessia’s decision to separate their Shorts and long-form content accelerated growth, but it also delayed monetisation.

“In hindsight, we wish we just stuck to one account,” they admit. “Our main channel is monetised, but our Shorts channel isn’t yet, and we’ve lost thousands of dollars in Shorts ad revenue.”

It is a reminder that Shorts strategy needs to be intentional. 

Simplicity Over Optimisation

Alongside Shorts, Alphabet signalled a major push into AI. Tools like Gemini 3 are designed to automate parts of the creative workflow, from vertical highlights pulled from long-form videos to edits generated from text prompts.

Interestingly, one of the biggest learnings from Taz and Alessia’s experience has been to simplify rather than over-engineer.

“At the start, we did everything,” they explain. “Descriptions, cover images, playlists, tags.”

Over time, that changed.

“Now we just upload and let the YouTube algorithm do the rest.”

Their focus is on high-energy moments, clear framing, and emotional payoff. The system does the rest.

Prime Time Has Gone Vertical

YouTube’s Total Video strategy makes one thing clear. The future of the creator economy will be bigger, more structured, and more valuable than ever.

For creators, Shorts are no longer optional. They are the front door to growth. For brands, YouTube now offers what television once did: reach, frequency, and cultural relevance, delivered through trusted voices.

Prime Time has not disappeared, it’s gone vertical, and it is playing in living rooms everywhere.

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