⏳ Short Form Video Conundrum

TikTok Advocates for Longer Videos

FEATURE

TikTok sparked the short-form video craze and now wants longer ones

TikTok is moving away from its uber-short video roots.

TikTok is selling the idea of longer videos to creators. At a recent event, TikTok claimed users are now spending half their time watching content that is 1+ minutes. While creators who produce longer videos are "growing 5x as fast” - perhaps a hint that TikTok’s algorithm is favoring long videos.

By comparison, with YouTube, the platform can insert ads immediately before or during a particular video. And the creator of that video gets paid.

But because of how short TikTok videos tend to be, TikTok inserts ads at intervals between several videos. Which makes it harder to reward creators and incentivize them to keep producing for their platform versus competitors.

TODAY’S HEADLINES

Google released 3 new AI shopping features. Users will be able to: get AI-generated gift ideas, use text to create an image of a desired product then search for matching real products and virtually try on clothes. (Google)

Microsoft Bing is using AI to create more informative search page results snippets. The snippets are generated by OpenAI’s GPT-4 language model, which analyzes both the user’s search query and the content of web pages to create short descriptions that capture the essence of each page. (Search Engine Journal)

Instagram may soon let keep your stories active for 7 days instead of 24 hours. This comes as part of a new “My Week” feature that Instagram is working on. (Matt Navara on Threads)

United Airlines may soon use customer data to show personalized ads on seatback screens or their app. United could begin to enable advertisers to personalize ads based on their customer data. (Business Insider)

Google's chatbot, Bard, can now understand and respond to user requests about YouTube videos. This includes providing summaries and details before playing. (Mashable)

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Written by Kole