Short-form video has become one of social media’s standout formats, and much of the credit (or the blame) goes to TikTok. This platform was the one that brought this format of ultra-short, highly viral clips into the mainstream, and every other major network has since adopted it. But is it still the best platform for your short-form content strategy? What about Instagram? And YouTube?
To answer these questions, Metricool has just published an interesting study comparing the performance of more than six million videos from 375,462 accounts around the world on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Thanks to it, we now have viewership and interaction data that make it much clearer which network is best for your posts, depending on the goal you have set for them.
With an average of 32,900 views per video, TikTok is the platform where short-form videos get the most average views, 42.6% more than Instagram Reels and 518.3% more than YouTube Shorts.
In fact, TikTok clearly outperforms Instagram across every type of account analyzed except for the so-called “Huge” accounts, those with more than one million followers. In that category, short-form videos average around 422,000 views on Instagram, compared with 417,000 on TikTok.
As the study’s authors themselves explain, “TikTok is the platform of visibility: it leads in views and likes across most account sizes, and performance continues to rise as accounts grow. If the goal is reach, TikTok rewards that effort more than any other platform.”
However, if what you are really looking for with your short-form video strategy is to connect with your audience, then your go-to platform should be Instagram. According to Metricool’s data, “Reels lead in shares, regardless of account size, and also in comments. Instagram does not always have the biggest audience, but it does have the most responsive one.”
Let us look at some of that data:
In any case, this is the big-picture view.
Looking more closely at community size, there are some differences that make TikTok appear to be an especially powerful option for getting discovered when you do not yet have a massive audience, while Instagram makes better use of an already established community.
For example, among accounts with fewer than 2,000 followers, TikTok leads in views, likes, comments, and total interactions, while Instagram comes out ahead in engagement and shares. By contrast, for mid-sized accounts with between 10,000 and 100,000 followers, Instagram overwhelmingly beats TikTok in comments (2.9 versus 13.9), likes (802 versus 653), and shares (235 versus 79).
As you can see, TikTok seems to be the most suitable option for gaining visibility, Instagram for sparking conversation and strengthening community, while YouTube Shorts can work as a complementary channel, but one that still delivers average results far below those of its competitors.
“Shorts is still finding its place: it is gaining momentum, but it still has not caught up with Reels or TikTok, and it needs to keep growing in order to compete with today’s two leading short-form video networks,” the authors explain regarding YouTube’s relatively low performance.
Image: ChatGPT
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