Tube Trends: The Media That Gets The Most Out Of YouTube Shorts

Data & Measurement

Oct 2

Last week in this space, we detailed why videos in the 2-to-5 minute range were the sweet spot for media, leaning into its strengths and creating revenue opportunities that are harder to come by with shorter videos.

And while that’s still very true, Shorts remain a crucial part of the social video ecosystem on YouTube and beyond. So media can still dip their toes into those waters with success, even if they avoid completely abandoning longer durations.

Data from Chartbeat video intelligence shows that U.S. media has generated nearly 85 billion views with YouTube Shorts uploads this year. But a significant portion of that content is not necessarily efficient, averaging just 46.4K views per video.

That said, some U.S. media pages are exceeding that number by factors nearly 200 times larger. So not only can many media companies achieve higher average viewership than that 46.4K number, but many are actually peforming well below it right now.

On the positive side, here are the top U.S. media YouTube Shorts creators by views this year — according to Chartbeat data.

This isn’t a case of media companies simply thriving on a small sample size either. All of these media companies uploaded at least 55 Shorts since the start of 2026. And half were over 100.

What did they all do so well? Even across a variety of content categories, there were some key takeaways.

Making Shorts Feel Part of Larger Strategy: Media entities like Dude Perfect and Cocomelon didn’t upload Shorts to simply hop on trends. They used them as extensions of the tone and communities they’d already built with longer videos. For regular audiences, the Shorts simply felt like they were extensions of the content they’re used to seeing. For the new viewers, Shorts were a way into an ecosystem they may not have seen otherwise.

Timeliness Pays Off: Where these creators did lean into trends, they were organic expressions that didn’t feel forced. Juguetes y Colores and Level UP found some of their biggest successes of 2026 leaning into the release of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. And Juguetes y Colores was sure to upload something Spider-Man related shortly after the release of Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

Consistency Is Key: All of these creators uploaded the overwhelming majority of their most-watched videos at around the same time of day. And in the case of Cocomelon, at the exact same time — noon GMT. While subscribe buttons work well, plenty of YouTube viewers would also like to just know that if they show on a creator’s page at about the same time each day or week, they’ll find something new. Consistent upload times build that behavior.

Success with Shorts or any other video format has less to do with inundation, and more to do with efficiency.

A media company flooding its feed with Shorts to keep up with the creator economy is a project doomed from the start. But one tha finds a way to incorporate Shorts into a natural part of its overall YouTube footprint is a media company that better understands where its success is found, with longer formats most creators don’t touch.

Striking the balance — for large and small media companies — takes work. But the data’s already out there to take advantage of existing audience tendencies and tailor content accordingly.