The search and marketing community should pay closer attention to YouTube.
According to the latest Global Digital Report, YouTube.com is the second most visited website in the world, behind Google.com but ahead of Facebook.com in third place.
Perhaps more importantly, YouTube is one of the top referrers of traffic to other websites – 18.73% of the traffic to the top 10,000 websites comes from Google.com, but 6.44% comes from YouTube.com.
This means we should also pay closer attention to the top three YouTube trends.
1. BrightEdge Data Reveals YouTube’s Growing Influence On AI Search Results
The first YouTube trend that we should focus on comes from new data that says AI Overviews are increasingly citing YouTube content, particularly instructional and how-to videos.
BrightEdge’s Generative Parser has uncovered a significant upward trend in YouTube citations within AI-generated search results, showing a 25.21% increase since January 1 and a 36.66% month-over-month growth from January to February.
Analysis of keywords used in AI Overviews that cite YouTube reveals a strong emphasis on:
- Instructional content with 35.6%, including “how-to” queries with 22.4%.
- Visual demonstrations with 32.5%, including physical techniques and style guides.
- Verification/examples with 22.5%, including product comparisons and visual proof.
- Current events with 9.4%, including breaking news and live coverage.
This highlights a clear shift towards AI Overviews leveraging video content for visual demonstrations, step-by-step tutorials, product comparisons, and real-world examples.
However, the use of YouTube citations varies across industries.
Healthcare leads with 41.97% of AI Overviews citing YouTube, followed by ecommerce at 30.87% and B2B tech at 18.68%.
Other industries like finance (9.52%), travel (8.65%), insurance (8.62%), and education (3.87%) also utilize YouTube in their AI Overviews, though at lower rates.
These patterns suggest that AI Overviews actively integrate video content to provide richer and more comprehensive answers, especially in areas requiring visual or practical demonstrations.
BrightEdge’s analysis suggests prioritizing product demos, step-by-step tutorials, and comparison content in video strategies to align with these citation patterns.
Since the full rollout of AI Overviews in May 2024, BrightEdge has tracked their impact across various industries.
While presence varies over time, healthcare and education continues to show notable trends.
Healthcare maintains a strong AIO presence, appearing in 63% of queries, which rises to 80% for question-based searches. In education, only 14% of queries trigger an AIO, but jumps to 75% when the keyword includes “skills.”
Significant increases in AIO presence have also been observed in B2B tech, ecommerce, and insurance.
Entertainment has seen a decrease in AIO presence, possibly due to the strong presence of knowledge graphs and universal results, which already fulfill user intent.
With the introduction of Gemini 2, further growth in AIO presence is expected.
Furthermore, BrightEdge’s research indicates a trend toward AI Overviews favoring authoritative brands.
In healthcare, where accuracy is crucial, 72% of AI Overview answers come from established medical research centers, up from 54% in January.
Similarly, in B2B technology, 15-22% of search queries are answered by content from leading companies like Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft.
This suggests that AI Overviews prioritize trustworthy sources to enhance the quality and reliability of their responses.
“This growth in YouTube is significant for two reasons,” Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge, said in an email.
“First, as a user generated content platform, it provides businesses with an additional platform to either leverage their community’s voice or directly build content that could function as a citation. This means brands have additional resource that could function as an AI Citation,” he said.
“The second significant reason is that sourcing YouTube is a clear demonstration of Gemini’s (the AI powering AIO’s) multi-modal capabilities.
Videos have been part of a search result for years, but in these instances, text such as the descriptions or transcripts, if available, are used to rank the video.
Now, with Gemini, we’re seeing that actual content in the video can be cited to help generate an answer to a query. This means that details in the video product review that may not be available via text can be used to generate an answer,” he added.
2. YouTube Shorts Creators Get AI Boost With Veo 2-Powered Dream Screen
The second YouTube trend we should focus on is from a YouTube announcement that it enhanced its Dream Screen feature on Shorts by integrating its new Veo 2 video generation model.
This upgrade significantly improves the process of creating AI-powered backgrounds and even standalone video clips for Shorts.
Dream Screen, which allows users to generate AI-driven backgrounds using text prompts, now benefits from Veo 2’s faster generation speeds, higher-quality visuals, and expanded capabilities.
Veo 2 enables more detailed visual output and supports a wider range of subjects. Beyond backgrounds, users can now generate entire short video clips.
To create a video background, users select the Shorts camera, choose the Green Screen option, then Dream Screen, and input their desired background description.
Dream Screen then provides AI-generated options.
For standalone clips, users open the Shorts camera and media picker, tap “Create,” enter a prompt, select the format (image or video), edit the length, and add it to their Short.
Google will apply SynthID watermarks and clear labels to all AI-generated content.
Veo 2 is currently available in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, with a global rollout planned for the future. This should accelerate the growth of YouTube Shorts.
According to a Pixability report, the number of daily views has skyrocketed since 2021, reaching over 70 billion in 2024. This massive amount of viewing is equal to over 100,000 years of watch time every single day.
While YouTube Shorts are primarily designed for viewing on mobile devices, they are accessible on any device with a screen, including televisions.
Interestingly, TV viewership of Shorts is increasing at a fast pace, suggesting that it will soon account for a significant portion of all Shorts views.
The Pixability report also provided the following advice:
- Boasting over 70 billion daily views, YouTube Shorts are a crucial platform that every brand needs to consider in their marketing strategy.
- Brands should actively create organic Shorts content for their YouTube channels, alongside their longer videos, to boost audience engagement.
- Even when not specifically targeting Shorts content, using vertical video ads can be surprisingly effective within standard horizontal ad placements.
- However, if your main objective is video completion, then advertising on Shorts content may not be the most effective approach.
- Maintaining brand suitability on Shorts requires careful use of placement targeting and exclusion.
- YouTube offers a unique opportunity to combine long-form video ads on TV screens with short-form ads on mobile devices within a single campaign, allowing brands to maximize their reach across different viewing experiences.
According to data from Tubular Intelligence, 30.4 million accounts uploaded 1.1 billion videos to YouTube worldwide over the last 365 days. These videos got a total of 31.5 trillion views and 947 billion engagements (e.g., likes, comments, and shares).
Of this total, 20.2 million accounts uploaded 516 million Shorts during that period. And these Shorts got a total of 24.6 trillion views and 768 billion engagements.
So, close to half of the videos uploaded to YouTube in the last year were Shorts, and they got 78% of the views and 81% of the engagements on the social video platform.
3. US Viewers Now Favor TVs For Watching YouTube Content
This brings us to the third YouTube trend, where YouTube CEO Neal Mohan announced a significant shift in viewing habits: TV screens have become the most popular way to watch YouTube in the United States, surpassing mobile devices.
This milestone was supported by data showing over 1 billion hours of daily YouTube consumption on TVs, and Nielsen data confirming YouTube’s dominance in streaming watch time for the past two years.
Mohan attributed this growth to YouTube’s seamless integration with smart TVs and streaming devices.
This change in audience behavior presents marketers with dramatically new advertising opportunities.
For example, this shift towards TV viewing opens doors for innovative ad formats.
QR codes displayed on TV screens can bridge the gap between big-screen viewing and mobile engagement, allowing viewers to instantly connect with content on their phones.
Pause ads can offer a non-intrusive way to deliver targeted messages when viewers pause a video.
In addition, YouTube is exploring “second screen experiences” that enable viewers to interact with TV content using their mobile devices, such as leaving comments, sharing videos, or making purchases.
These interactive tools can significantly enhance viewer engagement and provide measurable results, offering a more dynamic approach compared to traditional TV advertising.
However, this evolving landscape requires marketers to adapt their strategies.
For example, longer watch times on TV suggest opportunities for deeper engagement with ads and branded content.
The “big-screen mindset” necessitates high-quality, broadcast-like production for YouTube ads designed for a living room environment.
Accurate performance measurement will be crucial, requiring sophisticated cross-platform analytics and attribution models to track conversions across TV and mobile devices.
Beyond TV, YouTube has also become a leading platform for podcast consumption.
Mohan stated that YouTube is now the most frequently used service for listening to podcasts in the U.S.
This trend allows marketers to leverage the popularity of both TV and podcasts by creating video podcasts, which can effectively connect with audiences through engaging long-form content on larger screens.
This strategy aligns with the increasing preference for longer videos viewed in the living room setting.
In other words, YouTube’s transformation into a TV-centric platform demands that marketers adapt their strategies to capitalize on these new trends.
Key actions include leveraging new ad formats like QR codes and pause ads, creating high-quality content optimized for big screens, and exploring opportunities like video podcasts.
With longer watch times and increased TV engagement, brands have a unique opportunity to connect with audiences more effectively.
However, success will depend on implementing robust cross-platform analytics and thoughtfully integrating mobile and TV experiences to stay ahead of this evolving digital landscape.
According to Pixability, 56% of advertising agencies reported that their clients had increased their YouTube advertising spend in 2024.
Looking ahead to 2025, 44% of agencies anticipated further increases in YouTube investment, although 42% believed budgets would remain at the same level after the substantial growth seen in 2024.
Only 9% of agencies observed a decrease in YouTube spending in 2024, and just 3% predicted a decline in 2025.
One Of These Top 3 YouTube Trends May Change This Year
Later this year, YouTube will celebrate its 20th birthday. And I learned a long time ago that the video-sharing site changes about one-third of its major features every year.
So, the search and marketing community needs to stay on the lookout for the next new trend to keep pace with the creators who are focused on building their community, growing their channel, and making money on YouTube.
The very first YouTube video, “Me at the zoo“, was uploaded on April 23, 2005. So, we might anticipate another significant announcement around the end of April.
The IAB NewFronts will be held May 5-8, 2025, and YouTube might make significant announcements then, or the online video platform may wait until their annual YouTube Brandcast event during the TV Upfronts, which will be held May 12-14, 2025, to announce their biggest news.
And we will want to pay exceptionally close attention.
More Resources:
- How YouTube’s Recommendation System Works In 2025
- 20 Confirmed Facts About YouTube’s Algorithm
- Why Making A Good YouTube Video Is Hard (For Businesses)
Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock
