how the market is adjusting to the new restrictions in YouTube Shorts

YouTube’s decision to disable active links in short video descriptions will change how Russian marketers use the format, but will not lead to a complete abandonment of it, market participants believe. The YouTube Shorts platform delivered more click-through rates than other short video services. VK Video, which is still seriously lagging behind YouTube Shorts even in the Russian Federation, is already testing a new, more noticeable way of attaching links against this background.

Kommersant asked participants in the influencer marketing market about how the upcoming disabling of hyperlinks in the YouTube Shorts service will affect their activities. It remains one of the few international short video services available in the Russian Federation without restrictions: TikTok has restricted the publication of content from Russia, and Instagram with its Reels service is blocked in the country (Meta’s activities on the operation of Instagram and Facebook have been declared extremist in the Russian Federation and banned).

Google announced a change in the rules for posting links to YouTube in the Shorts section last week. Starting August 31, links placed in Shorts descriptions and in the comments below them will no longer be clickable. The company explained the decision by the fact that scammers and spammers are increasingly using this tool.

Olga Svistunova, senior content analyst at Kaspersky Lab, confirmed to Kommersant that the company noted the fraudulent use of the site in Russia, in particular, to advertise a fictitious Telegram bot of a cryptocurrency exchange. According to her, the video that advertised the bot was promoted by an account that posted a large number of Shorts with footage from the popular video game: “A person in short videos told how much money he made, and under them was a link to the full video.”

Large advertisers who avoid placing on Meta networks spent up to 60-70% of their marketing campaign budget on promotion through YouTube, notes Yulia Dolgova, head of LabelUp agency: “We believe that after disabling links, Shorts will be used exclusively for outreach campaigns representing a brand or product to the general consumer. Performance campaigns that measure specific results will be redistributed across classic YouTube video formats and beyond.”

Russian marketers have recently been actively using YouTube Shorts, as the ability to use other platforms in Russia has declined, and the service itself promotes short videos within the platform, said Ekaterina Movsesyan, CEO of CROS.

YouTube Shorts delivered a higher CTR (the ratio of the number of people who clicked on a link to the number of people who watched the content) than on other short video platforms. Epicstars CEO Denis Volkov clarified that the CTR of YouTube Shorts, according to their statistics, ranges from 2% to 8%, the click-through rate of Instagram Reels is from 0.8% to 1.5%, “and VK Clips are still lagging behind.” Ms. Dolgova indicated the click-through rate of YouTube Shorts in the range from 3% to 8%; The CTR of “VK Clips”, however, according to her data, does not rise above 0.5%.

Meanwhile, “VK Clips” not only do not refuse clickable links, but also test the ability to attach them directly to the video, Kommersant was told in the service. The tool is designed to provide a higher conversion than the links in the description: “We expect an increase in CTR upon completion of the tests.”

The cancellation of clickable links in YouTube Shorts is unlikely to lead to a significant abandonment of the format by advertisers or a redistribution of budgets, says Anna Planina, CIO of NMi Group: “Rather, this will encourage more use of promotional codes and invent new methods to circumvent restrictions.” She noted that short videos are already used primarily to promote the product as a whole, and “performance mechanics, including links in descriptions, play a secondary role.” The cost of conversions, the expert adds, in performance marketing through short videos is “incomparably higher than the cost in traditional channels, in particular in contextual advertising.”

Yuri Litvinenko, Yulia Yurasova