YouTube Shorts have become popular on smart TVs—2 billion viewing hours per month

Short vertical videos – from smartphones to televisions

*Vertical format*, originally conceived for mobile devices, is now gaining momentum on large screens: every month YouTube viewers spend more than 2 billion hours watching such clips on home TVs.

Smart‑TV – the key to platform growth
- In the United States, over 200 million hours of content from YouTube are consumed daily.
- The app already shows Shorts in search results, and soon a separate “Shorts for you” feed will appear on Google TV, which should further increase viewing time.

New interface for television
Since vertical clips occupy only part of the screen, YouTube updated its UI: next to each Short now displays comments. This makes watching more interactive and convenient on large displays.

Podcasts move into “multiformat”
For many years podcasts were considered purely an audio format, but now they are turning into video‑podcasts:
- They can be watched, or simply listened to with the TV left on in a neighboring room.
- In 2025 YouTube viewers watched more than 700 million hours of podcasts on TVs (last year – 400 million).

Competition for video podcasts
Netflix is also investing in this segment: the company has struck deals with major publishers and secured exclusive rights to several popular shows to compete with YouTube.