Social Video is Eating the World

How Big It Is, Why It Will Continue to Grow and What Big Media Can Do About It

All my writing is posted first on my Substack, The Mediator. This essay was posted on The Mediator one week ago.

Sign up for free to get The Mediator delivered to your inbox “day-and-date”!

DALL-E, prompt: “Create a cartoon image of a social media influencer character eating the world.”

Every few months, someone writes an article about the threat that YouTube or perhaps TikTok pose to traditional media (like here, here, here, here or here). The argument goes something like this: social video (or short form, user generated content or creator content, take your pick) is growing really fast, it is encroaching on consumption of professionally produced content and Hollywood is in denial or asleep at the switch.

It might seem like I just set up a straw man to knock it down with a theatrical flourish, but I didn’t. I agree with all of it.

I have written many times that I believe the TV and film business is in the early stages of a “second disruption.” The first disruption occurred within the professional video ecosystem, a.k.a. Hollywood, over the last 15 years, catalyzed by Netflix (which was followed by Amazon, Apple and the media conglomerates’ self-cannibalizing streaming services). The second disruption is occurring from without the professional video ecosystem, as social video, mostly on YouTube, TikTok and Reels, is now siphoning consumer attention away from professional video.

Still, there are a few unanswered questions: How big is social video viewing, really? Will it keep taking share? And what can the big media companies do about it?

Tl;dr:

• Based on Nielsen’s The Gauge, YouTube is already >11% of viewing on TVs (not the 10% that is usually cited). This excludes YouTube viewing on mobile/PC, TikTok, Reels and all other social video.
• It’s hard to get a holistic view of all video consumption, but triangulating data from Activate, eMarketer and a new dataset called Media IDentity Graph (MIDG), I calculate that social video is now ~25% of all video consumption and it grows every year.
• There are many reasons to believe that this share will continue to grow unabated.
• Among them: most younger consumers express a preference for social over professionally-produced content; for many viewers, their definition of quality is changing to include attributes that favor social video (authenticity, relatability, digestibility, etc.); social video triggers much more dopamine release per viewing minute, so this isn’t just a fad, it’s enduring brain chemistry; social is structurally more surprising and innovative; it’s muscling in on Hollywood’s turf with longer videos and episodic stories; and GenAI promises to make video storytelling much more accessible to the massive creator class.
• For Hollywood, social video is a problem. It will never be as financially attractive. It is still regarded as “less than.” And most attempts to cross over social stars to traditional have failed.
• But it is big and getting bigger, so traditional media companies need cohesive strategies. A more holistic approach might include not only tapping into social video for marketing, but more extensively for franchise development and perhaps even a bolder push into influencer marketing and social commerce.

I am now accepting sponsorships for The Mediator. To inquire about sponsoring, please contact me here. This post is presented by WSC Sports.

Elevate engagement with WSC Sports’ In App solution by seamlessly integrating vertical video creation and distribution into customizable story and reel-style widgets directly within your app by using WSC Sports’ automated solution.

In App Vertical Video

• Update content automatically with rules set by you.
• Spark fan participation with interactive polls and quizzes.
• Ensure continuous engagement in your owned-and-operated environment.

More than 460 partners around the world, including the NBA, Bleacher Report, LaLiga, New York Rangers, ACC Digital Network, University of Southern California, and YouTube TV, rely on WSC Sports for technology that enables more views, more formats, and more fans. Fuel the fandom with AI. Learn more.

Professional vs. Social/Short Form/UGC/Creator Video

Before digging in, let’s get squared away with nomenclature.

There are a lot of ways to categorize video consumption (e.g., cable/broadcast/streaming or linear/SVOD/AVOD/FAST). But arguably the most important distinction is between “Hollywood-produced” video and “non-Hollywood produced” video because they have very different business models and societal implications.

• Hollywood. The traditional film and TV industrial complex is, of course, dominated by a handful of big Hollywood studios (Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, NBC Universal, Netflix, Paramount, Amazon and Apple) and maybe 100–200 independent producers. These studios spend a lot of money to produce content, about $250 billion globally, and it is a risky business. They either distribute that content on their own distribution channels or license it to other distributors, also for a lot of money. It employs roughly 500,000 people in the U.S., but only a few dozen people in Hollywood have greenlight authority and therefore are the arbiters of what does and doesn’t get made.
• “Non-Hollywood.” This includes anyone who chooses to post online and is, therefore, accessible to most of the global population. Everyone has greenlight authority. Tens or possibly hundreds of millions of people around the world create video content today, when including YouTube, TikTok and Meta’s Reels. According to Social Blade, there are 64 million creators on YouTube alone. Unlike the studios, these platforms spend essentially zero on content¹ because creators upload it for free.

So, on the one hand, the rise of “non-Hollywood” content threatens the traditional professional content creation ecosystem. On the other, it has societal benefits, because it makes video distribution accessible to everyone.

Sometimes “non-Hollywood” content is called short form, user generated content or creator content, all of which have some limitations. For lack of a better alternative, I’ll call these two categories professional video and social video.

How Big Is Social Video, Really?

It’s difficult to get a holistic look at video consumption and compare the relative sizes of professional and social video because people consume video on a lot of devices.²

Below, I discuss a new effort, from Maverix Insights (founded by three of my former Time Warner colleagues), called Media IDentity Graph (MIDG). It captures consumption across all digital touchpoints (mobile, PC and CTV). But before getting to that, let’s survey what we know about social video from other sources and see if we can triangulate on a holistic view.

Nielsen

Every month, Nielsen releases The Gauge, which aims to provide a snapshot of linear and streaming viewing on televisions. Figure 1 shows the latest, for the month of June. As illustrated, for all persons 2+ in the U.S., YouTube viewing on TVs (this excludes viewing of YouTube TV and also YouTube viewing on mobile/PC) is 10% of all TV usage. Note that Nielsen TV usage includes an “Other” category that isn’t really TV viewing. (It’s gaming, audio streaming, DVD playback and other dribs and drabs.) In June, this Other was 12% of time spent on TVs.

YouTube’s share of TV viewing is actually 11.25%, not the widely-cited 10%.

So, in actuality, to calculate YouTube’s share of TV viewing (as opposed to usage), it is 9.9%/88%, or 11.3%. So, without accounting for YouTube consumption on mobile/PC, TikTok, Reels, X/Twitter or anything else, social video is already ~11% of viewing. And, Nielsen’s estimate of YouTube’s share of TV usage has been steadily growing since they launched The Gauge, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 1. YouTube is 10% of All TV Usage…

Source: Nielsen

Figure 2. …Up From ~7% Over the Past Two Years

Source: Nielsen

Activate/eMarketer

Activate and eMarketer both make valiant attempts at aggregating up disparate data sources to gauge time spent across media. Figure 3 shows both of their estimates for what I’m calling “professional” and “social” viewing, with two important caveats: for both, YouTube viewing on TVs is included in “professional,” not “social video,” and, unlike the Nielsen data, both estimates are for adults 18+. They both show that U.S. adults’ professional video consumption is around 5 hours per day and social is about 1 hour.

Figure 3. Activate and eMarketer Have Similar Estimates for Video Consumption

Note: Both Activate and eMarketer data include YouTube viewing on TVs as what I am calling “professional.” Source: Author analysis of Activate and eMarketer data.

Using the Nielsen data from The Gauge in Figure 1 (and adjusting it to exclude kids 2–18 viewing), we can move the YouTube viewing on TVs from “professional” to “social” to get a better (if still rough) picture of the total time adults spend with social video (Figure 4). As shown, based on this analysis, social represents an estimated 25% of all U.S. adults’ video consumption.

Figure 4. Adjusting for YouTube Consumption on TVs, Social Video is ~25% of Adults’ Total Video Consumption

Source: Author analysis of Activate and eMarketer data.

MIDG

MIDG tracks a panel of 30 million U.S. participants across all digital services (SVOD, AVOD, FAST, vMVPD, Social) and devices (mobile, PC/laptop and CTV). So, it has a complete picture of all digital video consumption, just not over-the-air broadcast and traditional pay TV (cable, satellite and telco). The sample is representative of the U.S. population and includes all age groups. As shown in Figure 5, for its total sample, social video represents about 1/3 of all digital video consumption, with the other 2/3 coming from SVOD, vMVPD and FAST.

Figure 5. Social Video Makes Up 1/3 of All Digital Video

Note: Snapshot taken in March of each year. Source: MIDG data from Maverix Insights.

Now, we can try to adjust this data by adding in all non-digital viewing using The Gauge data from Nielsen.³ The results are in Figure 6. As shown, social is still right about 25% of total video viewing, right on top of the Activate and eMarketer estimates.

Figure 6. Adjusting the MIDG Data to Include Linear Viewing, We Also Get Social Video at ~25% of Total Video Consumption

Source: Maverix Insights MIDG data, Nielsen, Author analysis.

There’s Little Reason to Expect it to Slow Down

So, anyway you slice it, social video is already one-quarter of all video consumption and it continues to creep up every year. Will it continue unabated? There are plenty of reasons to think it will:

Generational Shift

For years, Hollywood has dismissed YouTube. The argument has been that most YouTube videos are people slipping on the ice and cats playing the piano. Sure, the argument goes, people may watch it while on line at the DMV or teenagers may get together and then scroll TikTok sitting side-by-side to avoid actual social interaction, but it doesn’t compete with TV because it’s a different use case.

That logic is looking increasingly rickety. As noted above, YouTube accounts for 10% of all viewing on televisions, which is exactly the same use case: watching on a TV, probably wherever the family usually watches TV. The implication is that viewers don’t only watch social video for lack of anything better to do. They are actively choosing it over professionally produced video, at least some of the time. According to recent surveys from Accenture, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) (where I am a senior advisor) and Deloitte, that’s particularly true of younger viewers.

People don’t watch social video only to kill time. Often, they actively choose it instead of professional content — especially younger viewers.

This is from Accenture’s Reinvent for Growth: Only the Radical Survive report from April:

And highlighting a seismic shift in entertainment preferences, 59% of consumers said they regard user-generated content as equally entertaining as traditional media, signaling a competitive upheaval in the quest for audience attention.

Figure 7 highlights a similar conclusion from BCG. As shown, according to this survey by BCG’s Global Institute for the Future of Television (GIFT), Gen Z respondents prefer short-form for some attributes, like having relatable, useful and easy-to-find content. Figure 8 shows a very similar finding from Deloitte.

Figure 7. A Recent BCG Survey Shows Younger Consumers’ Preference for Social Video…

Note: Among Gen Z households with 1 + SVOD subscription that use 1+ short-from platform. Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Global Institute for the Future of Television (GIFT) survey, March 2024.

Figure 8. …As Does One from Deloitte

Source: Deloitte Media Trends, March 2024.

A Changing Definition of Quality

For a lot of media executives, it is hard to reconcile these data and surveys with their own taste. How could people actively choose social video over professional video? The reason is that the consumer definition of quality is shifting.

I’ve written about quality many times, including most recently here. Quality can be a slippery topic, because there’s no standard definition. But here’s a simple way to think about it:

You can think of “quality” as a (somewhat mysterious) algorithm. It is the weighted set of attributes that consumers consider when choosing between identically priced goods. Consumers aren’t necessarily aware of all these attributes themselves or their relative importance, but a convenient thing about this definition is that it is based on revealed preference, not stated preference. When consumers make different choices than they did in the past under similar circumstances, it reveals that their definition of quality has changed.

Media executives tend to have a relatively static definition of quality, but the consumer definition of quality is much more fluid, especially for younger consumers, who’s definitions are less ingrained. The attributes that define quality, and their respective weightings, change over time. If new entrants introduce new attributes that consumers value and internalize — even if only in some contexts, for some use cases — it changes the algorithm.

In TV, clearly the definition of quality is changing for a significant number of consumers, especially younger consumers, some of the time. While many media executives still define “quality” TV as something like the kind of prestige series you’d find on HBO — high production values, household-name stars and showrunners, great writing, etc. — social video has introduced all sorts of new attributes, like authenticity, relatability, relevance to my sub-community, discoverability, social currency, digestibility, being educational, time-to-surprise/shock/laugh, etc. This is not to say that the old markers of value no longer matter, just that they matter less or less often.

The Good Chemicals

A changing consumer definition of quality should always concern incumbents, because it can be really hard or impossible to adjust. But, if consumer taste is fickle and can swing one way, maybe it is just a fad and can swing back, right? In this case, probably not, because the shift is driven in part by enduring brain chemistry, not temporary fads.

This shift is driven in part by enduring brain chemistry, not temporary fads.

In February, Ted Gioia published a widely-circulated post, The State of Culture, 2024. He argues that we are entering a post-entertainment culture that revolves around compulsive entertainment and “this is more than just the hot trend of 2024. It can last forever — because it’s based on body chemistry, not fashion or aesthetics.” Here’s a cool chart:

Figure 9. Dopamine Culture

Source: Ted Gioia.

We often lose sight of it, as we sip an oat milk matcha latte in a temperature controlled Starbucks, wearing athleisure, tippy-tapping on our Macbook keyboards, but we’re still animals and, if not beholden to, certainly heavily influenced by, our physiology. Our brains evolved to like dopamine, so we crave it.

Relative to professional video, whether on linear or streaming, social video is far better able to maximize dopamine release:

• Variable rewards. In the 1930s and 40s, B.F. Skinner discovered that when rats were given food pellets at unpredictable intervals, they were more likely to press a lever than when they received the rewards predictably. Subsequent research revealed this occurs because the unpredictable rewards produce more dopamine. Smart product managers have known this for a long time. A decade ago, Nir Eyal published Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. In it, he lays out the “Hook Model,” which relies heavily on variable rewards. Today, variable rewards are a key design feature in many consumer products, like slot machines, videogames, social media and, of course, social video — all geared to capture and increase usage. The unpredictable payoff of scrolling through TikTok, Reels or Shorts is likely to release more dopamine than sitting down to watch one 22 minute sitcom.
• High frequency/low investment/rapid payoff. Estimates of the average watch time per TikTok video range from 3–8 seconds. It is easy to quickly verify the “quality” of a TikTok video and decide whether to keep watching or move on. Social video viewers get a much faster dopamine payoff than long-form viewers.
• The algorithm. Dopamine release is not only correlated with the variability of the reward, but also the perceived value of the reward. Social video is able to deliver very high value. According to eMarketer, the average U.S. adult TikTok user is on the platform 55 minutes per day, which may equate to 1,000 videos daily. (Crazy, right?) Social video platforms get vastly more signals than streaming platforms and can create extraordinarily fine-tuned recommendation algorithms and, therefore, higher value rewards. (They have far higher “signal liquidity,” to quote Scott Galloway.) While the Reels algorithm seems to know you better than you know yourself (how did it know I was planning a vacation in Europe?), it is questionable whether the recommendation algorithms on streaming platforms are much use at all. Last year, Netflix discontinued its “Surprise Me” feature because “users tend to come to the service with a specific show, movie or genre in mind.”

Social Video is Structurally More Innovative

The degree of experimentation in professional content is constrained by risk aversion, cultural mores and rules of thumb. It is very expensive and risky to produce, so development execs are naturally drawn to formats, genres and story structures that have worked before. Some talent shies away from risky projects for fear it could damage their brands and careers. Dramas tend to range from about 40 minutes to an hour. Comedies usually can’t sustain much longer than a half-hour. Movies are, of course, usually 90 minutes-to-one hour.

Social video is a hotbed of experimentation and innovation and sometimes these experiments work.

Social video, by contrast, has no such limitations. Since it is accessible to anyone who wants to press “upload,” it is a hotbed of experimentation and innovation, in terms of length, format and story structure. Some of these experiments are bound to work.

It is Muscling in on Professional Video’s Turf

In addition, social video is increasingly breaking out of the bounds of short, fully contained videos to muscle in on professional video’s turf: much longer videos and episodic structures.

At launch, YouTube limited videos to 10 minutes and Music.ly, the predecessor of TikTok, once limited clips to 15 seconds. That’s no longer the case. Today, YouTube videos can be as long as 15 hours. YouTube has also changed its algorithm and monetization policies to encourage longer uploads. (For instance, videos longer than 8 minutes are eligible for midroll ads.) TikTok is now experimenting with raising the video length to as long as 60 minutes for some users.

Maybe Quibi was onto something.

There are also at least weak signals that some viewers like watching long form content broken up into short episodes. The premise behind Jeffrey Katzenberg’s short-lived Quibi was that consumers want to watch long-form scripted content on a phone, broken into short snippets. It might have been the wrong strategy to invest heavily in premium content for an unproved format, but he may have been right about the emerging consumer behavior.

Today, there are dozens of short form scripted entertainment apps, like FlexTV, DreameShort, Kalos TV, GoodShort, MiniShortes, Playlet and ReelShort. These feature high-brow fare with titles like Knocked Up by My Ex’s Billionaire Uncle and The Call Boy I Met in Paris, generally broken up into 70–100 one-minute episodes. According to TechCrunch, these apps have been downloaded 120 million times worldwide.

Reinforcing the consumer appetite for serialized stories, it is common for people to illegally upload movie clips, sometimes including entire films spliced up. Last October, as a promotional stunt for the Mean Girls musical remake, Paramount put the entirety of the original 2004 film on TikTok for one day, cut up into 23 videos. And every now and again a serialized short form story will go viral. In February, TikTok user Ressa Teesa started posting videos about her marriage in a 50-video series called “Who TF Did I Marry!?” It blew up, with the first installment alone viewed about 40 million times.

GenAI is Coming

The production value and breadth of social video is also likely to increase over the next several years, propelled by GenAI. I’ve written about this a lot (here’s a recent overview), so I won’t rehash it. The basic idea is that GenAI tools (especially next-gen AI video generators, like OpenAI’s Sora, Runway Gen-3, LumaLabs’ Dream Machine, etc.) will democratize high quality production. This isn’t to say they will enable a kid in a dorm room to rival the production value of a blockbuster movie or prestige TV series anytime soon. But they will make video storytelling accessible to millions of creators who otherwise wouldn’t even think of acquiring the expertise or incurring the costs to shoot video.

What Can Big Media Do?

So, social video is big and likely to continue to encroach on professional video share of viewing indefinitely. For the big media companies, a bigger presence in social video will never offset pressure on traditional video. Unless you are a platform that aggregates the tail or a creator who somehow emerges out of it, it is a fundamentally less attractive business. But they still need a strategy to capitalize on its growth.

Social Video is a Different Business

Why social video is fundamentally different is probably obvious:

• A different market structure. Traditional video has high barriers to entry, namely significant capital to finance production and marketing. It also has limited shelf space — there are only a few broadcast networks, a couple of dozen relevant cable networks, a few general entertainment streaming services and a limited number of theater screens — which constrains the competitive set. By contrast, social video has no barriers to entry and is therefore highly (highly, highly) fragmented. Even a mediocre TV show might find an audience and partially recoup its costs. But if you put something mediocre out on social, it is instantaneously swallowed into the anonymity of the long tail, never to be heard from again.

A mediocre TV show might recoup some of its costs, but in social video mediocrity is instantaneously swallowed into anonymity.

• Different monetization. While traditional video monetizes through subscription fees and advertising, most social video only monetizes only through advertising or sponsorships, if at all. And social advertising has lower CPMs and fewer ad units per hour, generating less ad revenue per unit of consumption.
• A different balance of power. In traditional video, the largest content providers have substantial bargaining leverage over their distributors. Social video distribution is controlled by only a few massive platforms, who have all the bargaining power and can change algorithms or monetization policies at will.
• A different audience. Social video viewers are highly attuned to perceived authenticity and are accustomed to more free-wheeling, less polished content, which may not lend itself to a lot of the programming created by a large corporation.

What’s the Right Social Video Strategy?

Even acknowledging that it won’t likely move the needle financially and it’s hard to do, big media companies should have a comprehensive and cohesive social video strategy anyway. Most don’t.

For years, most big media companies have dabbled with several approaches to social video, some of which have worked better than others. You can think of these efforts in the following categories, rank ordered from most to least developed, although there is some overlap between them. The first three treat social video as a cost center, the last as a profit center:

Marketing. Most media brands have active social media marketing functions. This includes distributing trailers or trying to boost social momentum around their content through both paid media (such as influencer marketing) and earned media (like viral challenges or creating social-worthy events). As mentioned with the Mean Girls example above, sometimes they break up long-form content into short episodes or even release entire teaser episodes (such as a pilot) for free.

Franchise development. As opposed to marketing activations around specific movies or shows, franchise development aims to keep fans engaged outside of big content releases. It’s usually handled by social media or community managers. Today, this includes dedicated social video channels (like the Star Wars YouTube channel), video podcasts, social-specific content (like The Walking Dead: Red Machete web series), and behind-the-scenes footage or cast interviews.

Over time, I think progressive media companies should also enable and encourage fan creation on social video, especially as GenAI tools develop. As consumers increasingly face “infinite” media choice, one of the filters they will use is the strength and desirability of the community associated with that content, something I’ve written about before (see What is Scarce When Quality is Abundant). It probably seems radical to media companies that regard their IP as precious, but one powerful way to build community and fan engagement will be to facilitate fan creation (as I wrote about in IP as Platform).

Talent development. Big media companies have tried to cross social media stars over to traditional media, but underscoring the challenge of integrating the two, mostly unsuccessfully. In 2014, Disney acquired Maker Studios partially to source new talent. It ultimately failed and Maker was absorbed into the Disney Digital Network a few years later. There are a lot of other examples, like the lukewarm reception of The D’Amelio Show or Lilly Singh’s talk show, which was canceled. Mr. Beast’s high profile deal with Amazon will be an interesting test case whether even the biggest star on the internet can translate to TV. (The show, Beast Games, is currently mired in controversy.)

Occasionally there is a star who can legitimately cross over, like Quinta Brunson, the creator, producer, co-writer and star of hit Abbott Elementary, who got her start on Instagram, or Issa Rae, the multi-hyphenate behind Insecure, who started on YouTube. So far, though, these examples are the exception, not the rule.

The biggest question for big media: is there any money in it?

Monetization. The bigger and more interesting question for big media companies is whether there is any money in it.

• Branded content. Most media conglomerates have branded content divisions, which work with TV advertisers to create social video campaigns. For instance, when I was at Turner, our ad sales division created a business unit called Launchpad, which managed social video campaigns using Turner social properties (like, say, having Conan O’Brien eating a Snickers bar during a Team Coco post). Disney (CreativeWorks), Paramount (Velocity) and NBCU all have similar efforts. It isn’t clear this is a big business though, probably topping out at a couple hundred million dollars within multi-billion dollar ad operations.
• Social video distribution. Original webisodes, podcasts, etc., all likely generate some ad revenue, although — again — probably not much in the scheme of things. One opportunity that hasn’t been explored much is the idea of using social as a downstream monetization window for premium content. For instance, would it ever make sense to distribute, say, old movies (on a non-exclusive basis) on TikTok or YouTube after they’ve run their course on theatrical, home entertainment, first-window pay/streaming, free TV, etc.? Maybe.
• A bolder push into influencer marketing and social commerce. Probably the biggest opportunity and boldest bet would be for traditional media companies to make a push — probably through acquisitions — into influencer marketing and social commerce. Influencer marketing is a relatively large business, estimated at $24 billion this year and social commerce is supposedly $600 billion globally (a lot of that is in China; it is probably $100 billion in the U.S.). These are highly-fragmented ecosystems comprising influencer agencies, campaign management tools and social commerce enabling technologies. A progressive media company might be able to roll up the influencer marketing stack, for instance. This might enable them to create more holistic video campaigns across traditional premium video and social and possibly reduce transaction costs for big brands.

Facing the Challenge

Social video is already probably larger than a lot of people realize and it will almost certainly continue to gain share. For big media, it’s a problem. Their history with social video is spotty. In Hollywood, it is still considered “less than.” And it’s really hard to rally an organization around a business that makes less money than the core business.

As is the case for many of the challenges that big media faces today, there are no easy answers. But, as is also the case, a clear understanding and acknowledgement of the challenges is the first step.

Thanks to Maverix Insights for supplying the MIDG data and Nathan Micon and Shilpa Bisaria for their insights and feedback.

1. Other than occasional “creator programs,” which are usually about the size of what they spend on providing lunch for their workforce each year. YouTube pays out 55% of advertising revenue to creators, but it is therefore only paid in success and incurs no risk.
2. Last year, Nielsen launched Nielsen ONE, which tracks audiences across linear TV, streaming and digital, but the primary application so far appears to be optimizing cross-media ad campaigns, not providing a holistic view of video consumption.
3. The Gauge captures all broadcast and cable viewing over the air, on traditional MVPDs and vMVPDs, so the key is to add in all the non-vMVPD viewing of broadcast and cable, since this is already accounted for in the MIDG data.