Over the past year, Google's YouTube has been battling ad blockers against ad blockers, forcing users to choose between ads and YouTube Premium subscribers if they don't want to watch ads. Not long ago, Google's parent company Alphabet released its financial report for the first quarter of 2024, showing that YouTube's advertising revenue reached $8.090 billion, a significant increase of 21% from $6.693 billion in the same period last year.
However, in addition to YouTube's better advertising sales, the growth rate of Alphabet's other businesses, represented by the YouTube Premium subscription service, unexpectedly slowed down in the quarter. In an effort to increase the appeal of YouTube Premium subscriptions, YouTube has announced a new feature called "Jump Advance", which aims to give subscribers the ability to easily browse video content, allowing users to "jump where most viewers would normally jump." YouTube said it was using artificial intelligence to identify the "next sweet spot" to improve the user experience.
To put it simply, YouTube's "Jump Advance" is to let AI determine which part of a video is the best and let the user watch the climax of the video content directly. In a sense,"Jump Advance"Similar to the original launch of Station B"High-energy progress bar"、iQiyi"Green Mirror Curve",A curve is designed on the playback progress bar to present the content popularity value,So that users can have a certain perception of the highlights of the entire video。 It's just that at the beginning, Station B and iQiyi were based on user viewing to achieve related functions, and YouTube used more fashionable AI.
In fact, it is not difficult to guess the reason why YouTube launched "Jump Advance", after all, there is too much competition pressure from short video platforms such as TikTok and Reels. You must know that last fall, Zuckerberg announced that Reels' annualized advertising revenue exceeded $10 billion, reaching one-third of YouTube's level, not to mention TikTok, which has a much larger user base. Behind the vigorous development of the advertising business of these short video platforms, it is undoubtedly the time for TikTok and Reels to gain more and more users.
Today's situation is that short videos are based on triggers, behaviors, uncertain rewards, and inputs that form an addiction model, and the core purpose is to "become addictive". In order to allow the user's brain to secrete more dopamine, the emphasis is on instant gratification, so that short video has become the most efficient product in the current Internet world in terms of "killing time".
As early as 2020, teenagers in Europe and the United States spent almost the same amount of time on TikTok as YouTube. Four years later, it's clear that the situation is even more dire for YouTube.
To use Nielsen's statistics, YouTube may still have an advantage in the living room, but TikTok has become dominant on mobile devices. Naturally, YouTube has had a hard time, and it has changed its friendly face, forcing users to choose between watching ads and subscribing to the service. In fact, short videos squeeze the living space of long videos, so that the story of long video platforms being forced to fight back has been staged in the domestic market. Previously, in 2021, more than 70 parent video platforms and film and television companies represented by Aiyouteng have united to call on short video platforms to respect originality and protect copyright.
Then, at the end of that year, the China Network Audiovisual Program Service Association stated in the "Detailed Rules for the Review Standards for Online Short Video Content" (2021) that short video programs and other content must not appear "unauthorized cutting and adaptation of movies, TV dramas, online film and television dramas and other audiovisual programs and clips". This rule clarifies the boundaries of long video clips, and directly locks the future of Erchuang with "no unauthorized editing", so that for a long time, "Take you to watch XX in three minutes" almost disappeared from Douyin and Kuaishou.
Sadly, the resistance of the long video platform did not last. Only a year later, iQiyi, which took the lead in boycotting the second creation, chose to bow its head and announced that it had reached a cooperation with Douyin to explore the secondary creation and promotion of long video content. Immediately after, Tencent Video also announced a partnership with Douyin. The reason why the strategy of the long video platform to try to curb the short video platform with the second creation as a weapon ended in vain is actually very simple, that is, users don't buy it.
The long video platform that has returned to vain can only sign the alliance under the city, use the pre-authorization model to solve the problem of second creation, and choose to work with the short video platform to make this cake bigger. If you can't beat it, joining has become the option of Aiyouteng back then, and YouTube is the same now. Since users like to get strong stimulation in the shortest possible time, then directly use AI to help users pick out the climax part of the video, and then let the user jump, this approach is essentially YouTube using AI to create a second creation, and the effect achieved is to allow users to have the effect of watching short videos on YouTube.
I have to say that compared to making YouTube Shorts from scratch, with YouTube's deep accumulation today, it may be a good thing for creators and users to directly provide users with an experience that can also watch short videos.