Connected TV (CTV) viewing – or watching on your home TV set – has been the fastest-growing usage category for YouTube, while Shorts has been its fastest-growing content format.

It makes sense, then, for YouTube to combine them both, with YouTube launching a new Shorts experience for your home TV, which will present Shorts in a full-screen, interactive format on your larger viewing device.

As you can see in this example, the new Shorts display will present a smaller viewing window in the middle of the screen, while users will be able to interact with Shorts clips via their TV remote, enabling them to skip through, select topic tags, and more.

YouTube says that it conducted various user tests to establish the best presentation format for Shorts on the larger screen, with the intention of building an experience that maintained the essence of Shorts in a new way.

As per YouTube:    

“It was important that the Shorts experience on TV felt consistent with what the community sees on mobile and also natural on the bigger screen.”

The advantage of displaying Shorts content on the bigger screen is that more people can tune in at once, which changes the process, and could help to better engage even more users via YouTube’s TV alternative options.

The rise of CTV viewing is an important trend of note for marketers, because it essentially enables TV-like ads without the high price of traditional TV campaigns, and with digital platform targeting options to better refine your reach.

And with YouTube also adding ads in Shorts, that could open up new opportunities for brands to reach engaged audiences via YouTube’s CTV process.

The rise of VOD services more broadly has been a key shift – and really, most younger viewers don’t watch traditional TV channels at all anymore, with most far more aligned to YouTube and content creators in apps, along with Netflix, Disney+, etc.

With this in mind, all marketers should take note, and the addition of Shorts on YouTube CTV is another significant development on this front.