With TikTok’s Fate in Limbo, Could YouTube Shorts Be Beauty’s Next Big Growth Opportunity?

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Laneige ranks as the biggest brand on YouTube Shorts by views, per Dash Hudson.

As the fate of TikTok, which pioneered the growth of short-form video globally, hovers in limbo, could YouTube Shorts offer a promising next frontier for short-form beauty content?

While Shorts only generates roughly one-third of the views of its counterparts on average, data from Dash Hudson indicates its views have grown 24 percent this year compared to the fourth quarter of 2023, while TikTok and Reels have seen respective declines of 18 percent and 3 percent during the period.

Viewer retention rate is also greater for beauty brands on Shorts at 77 percent, versus 29 percent on TikTok.

Nevertheless, Instagram Reels is more developed at this stage, garnering nearly the same average views per video that TikTok does (90,543 for Reels versus 93,071 on TikTok).

“The sample of beauty brands who are using YouTube Shorts is so much smaller than the samples of those who are using TikTok or Reels, but the early-adopter brands who are getting in there are seeing success,” said Quinn Yung, customer insights manager at Dash Hudson.

Laneige, already a top performer on both Instagram and TikTok, is one such brand benefiting from a well-established presence on Shorts. The continued success of Fenty Beauty — which launched in 2017 during the tail end of YouTube’s golden era — has been more a matter of fine-tuning its long-form savvy to wield the same kind of momentum on Shorts.

Other top growers like Laura Geller and Belif, though, “are interesting — they’re brands we don’t see as top-performer on TikTok or Instagram,” said Yung, adding that much Shorts content is cross-posted from competitor platforms, a strategy that appears to be working in driving growth for the time being.

“During the first quarter, beauty brands across the board grew 3.1 percent on YouTube — that’s pretty significant for a 20-year-old platform, and we’re seeing that it is Shorts is driving that growth,” Yung continued.

Another strength of the platform is YouTube’s cross-generational appeal, with eMarketer research indicating the platform has a more sizable Gen X and Baby Boomer viewer base than its counterparts, which skew more toward Gen Alph, Gen Z and Millennial audiences.

“Data suggests brands are making sure they’re very diversified in where they’re growing their communities, which is certainly what we recommend because you never know what could happen to these channels,” said Jillian Robinson, director of global communications and events at Dash Hudson. “People have invested a lot of time and energy into building these fantastic communities on TikTok so it’s kind of like, if the club closes, where does everybody go?”

The declines in views TikTok and Instagram Reels are seeing is likely due to “a combination of saturation, competition, seasonality and [changing] consumer behavior,” said Robinson. “We do tend to see these types of fluctuations from time to time, however they do make the increase in Shorts particularly interesting.”

While it remains to be seen how the hierarchy of short-form video platforms will evolve in the near future, here’s a glance at which beauty brands are winning on YouTube Shorts.