Hi there, we’re thrilled to see MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) taking his YouTube game show, Beast Games, to Prime Video. In this deal with Amazon, Jimmy will serve as host and executive producer of this largest-ever reality competition series, which will feature a $5 million cash prize. Spotter connected Amazon with Jimmy, leading to this exciting new series. Jimmy also sat down with Colin and Samir to discuss his new venture. Watch the full interview here. 

—The Spotter Creator Team

Increasing Long-Form Views with the Related Shorts Feature

What are Related Shorts?

In September 2023, YouTube unveiled an exciting new feature that enables creators to add links to other videos on their Shorts. This feature helps guide audiences to explore more of the creator’s content, including long-form videos. We looked at the data and found that although not a lot of creators are using this feature yet, the creators who are using it to link to their long-form videos are seeing an increase in views on those videos. It may be worth it for you to consider testing it out to help you grow your long-form views. 

How Viewers Can Interact with Your Linked Video

If a Short is using the Related Shorts feature, viewers will notice a clickable link to another video under the channel handle. This is a great way to utilize your existing Shorts library to grow your long-form traffic. 

Utilization and Results

Since this feature is new to the platform, we found that only 2% of channels received a noticeable amount of long-form traffic from Related Shorts*, likely due to low adoption of this feature. However, many of the creators who are using Related Shorts have been able to achieve a significant lift on their long-form uploads. For medium to large channels with a noticeable amount of long-form traffic coming from Related Shorts, we observed an average 10% increase in first 30 days views for new uploads compared to the channel average.**

What This Means for Creators

Creators who post Shorts should take advantage of the Related Shorts feature. This does not mean that you should post more Shorts – rather, use the Shorts you do post more strategically by directing viewers to your long-form videos, as views from long-form videos have much higher RPM. In other words, utilize existing or planned Shorts uploads to grow long-form views.

*Analysis for 5000+ channels. Channels with at least 2% of traffic to long-form content coming from Related Shorts are considered noticeable.

**Analysis for channels with more than 2% Related Shorts traffic to long-form videos and 1M+ long-form views per month.

Questions? Feel free to reach out if you’d like to learn more. 

• MrBeast strikes Amazon deal for biggest competition series in TV history.

• Congratulations to Gracie’s Corner for winning Outstanding Children's Program at the 2024 NAACP Image Awards.

• After battling for the spot during training camp, Deestroying was named starting kicker for the San Antonio Brahmas in the upcoming 2024 UFL season.

• Vidcon Anaheim announced more Featured Creators who will be joining them this year, including MissDarcei, Kinigra Deon, and Keith Habersberger & Zach Kornfeld of The Try Guys.

• Smoothie King has partnered with Dude Perfect to launch a new, limited-edition smoothie and three 32oz collectors cups that are now available nationwide.

• Eugene Lee Yang of The Try Guys earned a spot on the best-dressed list at the 2024 Oscars.

• GameSquare announced completion of the FaZe Clan acquisition, making them one of the largest gaming and esports organizations in the world based on audience reach.

• Gavin Magnus shared his thoughts in a Forbes article about the potential TikTok ban: “...Shutting it down would take away this creative outlet and the opportunity for many to build careers and communities …”

• On International Women’s Day, Gracie’s Corner partnered with a local Houston cafe to support children in underserved areas by donating 20% of proceeds from the sale of specially made Gracie’s Corner cookies to the Gracie’s Corner Foundation.

• Marketing firm Out2Win has put a new spin on March Madness and NIL by introducing an Athlete-Creator Tournament to determine the top content star in college sports, and Deestroying is among the 64 creators competing.

Jobs

• NichLMAO is hiring a Video Editor and Scriptwriter (Full-time, Los Angeles, CA) 

• MrBeast has opened a One Application Submission form for future roles (Greenville, NC)

YouTube

• YouTube has officially introduced a new tool in Creator Studio requiring creators to disclose if a video is made with AI.

• YouTube is rolling out a new YouTube Studio update that will allow creators to analyze retention based on audience segments.

"Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous."

 – Bill Moyers