With TikTok in limbo, YouTube Shorts cashes in

“In 2024, the monetization rate of short relative to in-stream viewing increased by more than 30 percentage points in the U.S. and we expect to make additional progress in 2025,” he said on the call, though he didn’t share specific figures to compare formats.

Even without specifics, it’s tough to ignore the likelihood that uncertainty over TikTok’s fate in the U.S. has played a role in that surge.

YouTube has been offering sweeteners in recent weeks to encourage advertisers to spend more of their ad dollars with them. And specifically, why they should consider YouTube Shorts as an alternative to TikTok, according to three of the ad execs interviewed for this story.

“They’ve [YouTube] shared numbers from eMarketer on how Shorts, after TikTok, is the go-to platform for Gen Z to watch short-form content,” said Shamsul Chowdhury, evp paid social at Jellyfish. However, he did caveat that currently his team is spending less than 10% of their YouTube budget on Shorts, without providing exact figures.

Those eMarketer numbers are essentially meant to highlight just how much overlap exists between the two platforms: in 2025, Gen Z is expected to take up 49.8% of TikTok’s total U.S. users in, while YouTube (including Shorts), should see 62.9% of U.S. users coming from the same generation, per the numbers. 

Ben Dutter, chief strategy officer at Power Digital, echoed that sentiment, adding that YouTube — and by extension Google, has been upfront with his team and clients, offering insights into customer behavior, web analytics and video consumption trends.

“YouTube Shorts is very similar in terms of ad creative, engagement, and capabilities as TikTok,” he added. “While we’re confident TikTok will remain in business in the U.S., many of our clients are exploring YouTube Shorts as an alternative.”

They’re not alone. Other advertisers are doing the same — no doubt nudged by the recent incentives Youtube has been dangling to lure ad dollars its way from TikTok. Think “spend X amount and the platform will give you X amount in ad credits.”

But while those perks are appealing, they’re not the deciding factor for most marketers. At best, they’re just a sweetener. 

The reality is Shorts has been a safety net for advertisers ever since a TikTok ban in the U.S. started to feel like more than just political posturing. 

When Digiday spoke with several ad execs last year about contingency plans, four of them were clear: If TiKTok were to vanish from the U.S., YouTube Shorts would be one of the biggest beneficiaries. Speaking about Power Digital’s clients’ contingency plans Dutter estimated that based on current projections, about 25% of his clients’ TikTok budgets would likely shift to Shorts. 

After all, it’s one of the easiest ways for marketers to reach the audiences who would’ve been scrolling TikTok — at least, according to YouTube. 

“TikTok’s brief shutdown has already spurred some advertisers to start experimenting more on YouTube, and that’s a trend that’s likely to continue amid the volatility, even as advertisers have returned to TikTok,” said Jasmine Enberg, vp and principal analyst, social media and creator economy at eMarketer. “Even before the shutdown, YouTube was already one of the top platforms that advertisers intended to invest more in during 2025.”

That final point has been something YouTube has been keen to stress too — that it’s not just a TikTok replica. In fact, Google went so far as to post a blog on Nov. 13, stating that 40% of its Shorts users are not on TikTok, citing a survey by Morgan Stanley AlphaWise — indicating that there’s a whole new audience to be found on the platform.

YouTube, of course, has been pushing that bigger message home — not just as a TikTok alternative but a format with its own distinct audience. Google even published a blog post on November 13, citing a Morgan Stanley AlphaWise survey that found 40% of Shorts users aren’t on TikTok. The message is clear: There’s a whole new audience on Shorts, not just TiKTok spillover. 

But there’s arguably a more pressing difference between the two platforms — one that’s not quite as enticing to advertisers. 

According to one ad exec who preferred to remain anonymous, while format-wise YouTube Shorts might be close to a like-for-like, the cost of advertising on YouTube Shorts doesn’t yet pay off as it does on TikTok.

“YouTube CPMs are usually more expensive and the results are less effective than TikTok,” they said. 

The exec noted that YouTube CPMs are often over $12, and and even when targeting Shorts, at times the CPMs can be around $6 to $8. “That can be as high as 25% to 100% higher than typical TikTok CPMs,” they said.

From their experience, the exec also said that they routinely show TikTok drives a 4.4X greater incremental return on ad spend than YouTube. “This is across dozens of tests run across both platforms during 2024,” they added.

Still, a lot of this could be down to the fact that the ability to target YouTube Shorts specifically is still fairly new. 

The YouTube Select Shorts Pilot (the ability to target the top 1% of YouTube Shorts via reservation) launched in summer 2023 and only became available to all advertisers at the beginning of 2024. But throughout last year, Google also started to introduce the ability to target Shorts-only inventory in auction campaigns, such as Video Reach and Video View campaigns. It effectively gave advertisers more options to target Shorts in the same way they would for TikTok or Meta’s respective rival formats on their platforms.

“Giving us the ability to now lean into that we could have much more impactful conversation with our clients and engage the consumer in a way that makes a lot more sense for them,” said Brian Binder, senior director, TV, audio and display innovation at Tinuiti.

YouTube did not immediately respond to Digiday’s request for comment.