YouTube Adds New Shorts Shelf in Channel Listings, Continuing its Push on Short-Form Content

YouTube continues to make Shorts a bigger focus, with a new addition on the desktop version of YouTube channel pages that will display each channel’s Shorts clips (where available) in a separate element.

As you can see in this example, now, when a channel has uploaded Shorts, they’ll be displayed in a separate section, giving Shorts content more specific focus, and likely driving more viewers, which could also make Shorts a more critical promotional element.

Which, again, is in line with usage trends, and engagement around short video clips. Indeed, YouTube recently reported that Shorts clips have cumulatively amassed over 5 trillion views thus far, and with Shorts catching on in India in particular, it makes sense for YouTube to lean into the format where it can, and help its creators boost their channel performance via the format.

This is where YouTube is looking to make a bigger push on Shorts, and put more pressure on TikTok. Rather than making an individual Shorts app to take on TikTok directly, YouTube’s framing Shorts as a supplementary element to your main YouTube channel, which is where YouTube creators are able to make the most money, and by more overtly linking the two, YouTube’s hoping to showcase its broader monetization potential to top video stars, which could make YouTube’s overall offering a much more attractive option than TikTok, which doesn’t yet have a comparable revenue-generation process in place.

This new display is the next element in that push, by giving Shorts key focus within the broader scope of a creators’ channel, helping to promote both to viewers – and ideally, attract more views for each.

In addition to this, YouTube has also launched an updated channel editing process on mobile, new custom thumbnails for videos on demand, and an updated display of user gender listings in analytics.

But the Shorts shelf is the key update, and as YouTube continues to explore new ways to both lean into short video clips, and put the squeeze on TikTok, you can bet that more TikTok stars will indeed be looking YouTube’s way, especially as others make the switch and start making big dollars from their content.

TikTok may be the cooler platform, but money talks, and it may eventually end up yelling if more of the top stars do indeed make the switch.

You can learn more about YouTube’s latest updates here.