Social Video is Eating the World

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

Starting April 2025, all full posts, including archived posts, will be available on my Substack, The Mediator.

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.

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