At the end of 2022, some web articles warned about the decline of YouTube views among YouTube Creators like Joueur du Grenier, Cyprien or Nota Bene...

Wizdeo tried to check if the phenomenon was real and if it was spreading to all YouTube channels/videos.

We have analyzed the evolution of views in 2022 of 1,000 most active channels of French YouTube creators (channels with more than 10K views on average per video). To better understand the impact in views on established channels, we have discarded channels that are too recent or, on the contrary, channels that have almost stopped publishing in 2022.

Furthermore, we separated for all channels the views of shorts and VOD views. And then, for the VOD views, we distinguished: 

• Recent video views: views on the first 30 days of videos
• Catalog views: views on videos older than one year
• Intermediate views: views on videos less than a year old and more than 30 days old

Overall, total views increased by 17% in 2022

Total views on the 1,000 channels in the panel increased by 17% in 2022, meaning 36.7 billion views in 2022 vs. 31.3 billion views in 2021. 

This overall increase, on these 1000 channels, is to be compared to only 7.4% in 2020 and 2021, so growth has accelerated. 

Shorts and VOD views increased, but with a clear advantage for Shorts views

VOD video views increased by 7.5% to 31.4 billion views in 2022 vs. 29.9 billion views in 2021. This is more than between 2020 and 2021, when total views stagnated (+0.08%) from 29 billion in 2020 to 29.2 billion in 2021. Note however, that there were more videos published in 2021 vs. 2020 and therefore that the performance of views per video was significantly lower in 2020 (-20% of VOD/video views in 2021 vs. 2020), an exceptional year since it was marked by containment.

The views of Shorts videos exploded, going from 1.4 billion in 2021 to 5.3 billion views in 2022 (+430%), which is normal since Shorts appeared in 2021.

The appearance of Shorts and their growth in views between 2021 and 2022 did not prevent VOD views from growing.

Analysis of video views for a sample of 1,000 French YouTube channels between 2021 and 2022 

Source: Wizdeo Analytics

No change in the distribution of views between old and new videos 

45% of views are on videos published less than 30 days ago, 30% on old videos (>1 year) and the rest, about 23% on videos published less than a year ago (but more than a month old).

Although total views are increasing, the distribution of views on recent / old / intermediate videos remains stable between 2021 and 2022: it seems that there has been no change in Youtube's algorithm for VOD videos, the first 30 days remain of course privileged. 

In December 2022, views on videos less than 30 days old decreased, not because of an algorithm change, but because less VOD publishing and more Shorts

While VOD views have increased over 2022 vs. 2021, this trend is less visible over the month of December, during which, Shorts views seem to have taken over and VOD views dropped by 14%, from 2.4 billion in December 2021 to 2.1 billion in December 2022.

Looking at these VOD views in detail, in December, there were significantly fewer VOD videos published than last year (-10%), which would explain in large part the drop in VOD views over this period, while the 30-day view performance of the videos has changed little.

Several channels started to make Shorts during the year 2022, and the effect is particularly noticeable at the end of the year at the expense of long videos.

For example, Tibo InShape had 30M VOD views in December 2021, or 99.6% of views on VOD.

In December 2022, Tibo InShape made "only" 14.5M on VOD, but 58M on Shorts, that is to say 80% of its views!

In total, despite the explosion of Shorts, there does not seem to have been a decrease in views for VOD videos between 2021 and 2022. The cannibalization of VOD views by Shorts views, which increases at the end of the year, is largely attributable to the transition made by many of the channels in the panel towards less VOD and more Shorts. 

This is reassuring for the established channels that continue to do VOD; however, for those that decrease their VOD production while launching into Shorts, it is likely that the Adsense revenues lost in VOD will not be compensated by the new revenues from Shorts, which are much lower.