In December of last year, I called for media and tech companies to build a compelling short-form content offering or risk ceding Gen Z, and the generations to follow, to the likes of YouTube and TikTok.
Now in 2025, many content and streaming companies are now seeking to aggressively invest in shorts, creating more value for their long form content by leveraging it in short form. And while the majority see a big business opportunity for themselves on their own platform, as well as the potential in the syndication market, what has been most interesting to me is the various use cases that have come to light, many of which are beginning to reveal themselves more to businesses.
The primary use case that has emerged is shorts as a discovery tool. Long gone are the days of channel flipping or reading your coffee table TV guide to find something of interest, and there are certainly AI-based discovery options on the market today. But perhaps like the happy accident of sticky notes, consumers are finding content through their social video feeds. That’s right: shorts is the new EPG (Electronic Programming Guide, or TV Guide).
My company, Quickplay, recently conducted a study, partnering with Uniday’s marketing firm Gen Z Insights, showing that nearly 71 percent of Gen Z consumers discover content through social platforms. So, it’s no wonder media companies are actively investing in a shorts strategy in their apps to surface new and long tail content, in the hope that consumers engage, bookmark, or click to start watching.
With the publishing velocity game being solved by AI tools and workflows, a scaled shorts publication capability is within reach. Content can now be served up at lighting speed — proactively showcasing the depth of a content library and bringing more or newfound merchandisability options than the streamer rail format. Furthermore, in a shorts experience managed within one’s own app, the personalization engine can quickly tailor the feed based on time spent watching and other engagement metrics to make the most relevant content easier to find. And another added benefit: Consumers are engaged throughout the experience — eliminating the dreaded “what’s on” rail scroll. Finally, we have the tools to truly go meta — leveraging content in short form to merchandise that same content in long form.
This leads directly into the second use case for shorts: data. For marketers and programmers, real time, click-stream data from a owned shorts experience offers insights into a consumer’s interests in shows, characters, celebrities and brands that can inform acquisition strategies, cold starts, ad sales, and personalized storefronts.
Just imagine Max knowing that I like Parker Posey due to my interactions with their library through shorts and having the ability to target and acquire me as a subscriber via White Lotus at a significantly lower cost than general acquisition channels. Imagine Disney+ knowing I enjoy watching shorts with magic tricks and targeting David Blaine’s Do Not Attempt through promotional messages to retain me for another month. And imagine Paramount+ seeing my repeated replay of Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime Show and offering the brand 7 for All Mankind in a shoppable link to their bootcut jeans, offering the advertiser a clear ROI on their investment. Shorts data leads to better business outcomes in consumers acquisition costs, engagement, monetization and retention strategies — plain and simple.
And then there’s sports. At Sports Pro OTT last month, Maurits Schön, COO of One Football noted that short-form clips were helping to drive activity towards longer highlights which, in turn, were aiding sales of live games and driving conversions to their over-the-top (OTT) offering, with between 40-50 percent of purchases being made during the game.
While sports highlights have always been part of the engagement strategy with fans, this experience is about to be supercharged.
At The NAB Show this year, we showcased how to build a shorts capability with live sports content, including metadata creation, verticalization and publication capabilities within seconds. This has been the result of numerous conversations and partners pushing us to get as close to “live” as possible so that programmers can use these shorts to drive in-game tune-in messages, to offer quick catch-up opportunities and personalized previews for merchandizing storefronts, and to own the conversation around the game, players and fans.
The reason I share some of these examples is to admit I was somewhat short-sighted of the shorts opportunity. One thing I am sure of: we are on the verge of seeing massive investment in short-form content as these use cases are tested. (And, full disclosure, it’s something that my company, Quickplay, is betting on. This year we came to market with two products for short-form content: one publishing shorts content derived from TV shows, movies, sports and news content leveraging AI models; and a second – a plugin – that integrates with streaming applications.)
As media companies compete with large-scale social platforms, they must learn how to creatively participate in the creator economy or risk extinction. They also need to understand how they can build their own daily app habit with consumers through a strong value proposition. The long view is important to get right, and one thing is clear – to be around for the long term, the considerable ROI from shorts must be harnessed in the short term.
Paul Pastor is co-founder and chief business officer of Quickplay, with prior leadership positions powering brand, channel and show success at Discovery Communications and The Walt Disney Company.
