Short Form Content in Southeast Asia

By Jerry Soer & Qilan Umara

Southeast Asia has been leading the adoption of short form content ahead of most parts of the world. A few years ago when Instagram Stories launched, the region led the way in adoption and number of stories posted. It is still one of the top Stories using regions of the world today. In the COVID era the adoption of short form content beyond ephemeral Stories have grown. Championed by TikTok and copied by Instagram’s Reel, YouTube Shorts and many other copycats, the short form video format is here to stay. Who wouldn’t want to spend less time watching video and still get the point and keep up with culture?

Short form videos root began with Vine in 2013, which was acquired and eventually shut down by Twitter. A classic example of innovation too early in the cycle, Twitter never developed monetisation for its creators. The early Viners left to become YouTubers. Some of them came back when short form came back with Musically, which was acquired and supercharged by TikTok, which is now the dominant short form platform. 

For the purposes of this article, short form is content anywhere between 6 seconds and 3 minutes, both video and audio. Similar to the rest of the world, Southeast Asia is dominated by the three major short forms made by Bytedance - TikTok, YouTube - Shorts and Instagram - Reels. The minor players are Kuaishou - Snack Video, Snapchat, and all the Stories functions present not only in Instagram but also every other platform. 

Content Creation

For the simple ease of content creation, TikTok wins easily. The app is famous for both simplicity and robust features, as well as up to date editorial, challenges, trending clips and discoverability through the For You Page. TikTok’s main user proposition of making social media fun really connected as the world locked down in the shadow of COVID-19. Keen for a break from doom scrolling, TikTok became a reprieve from bad news and got itself to a billion users on the way. 

Both Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts are playing catch up in the product feature set, I’m pretty sure by next year they will not only catch up but develop their own unique app features.. For now though, TikTok seems to be able to keep their top spot of user friendliness and fun factor. It’s evident with the number of TikTok videos getting uploaded to all other platforms. Tiktok is rich in filters, fonts, stickers, and many kinds of tools  for video-editing. 

Reach

In terms of pure reach, YouTube wins here as the platform with the largest number of users. It helps that all Android phones come with YouTube preinstalled. YouTube also has the advantage of being around the longest and it’s very hard to change a habit once forged. By inserting YouTube Shorts into the mobile app replacing the discover button and intermingling Shorts video with long form video, YouTube has an easy time flexing their reach and giving exposure to a new generation of short form video make

Community building

Instagram's close integration with FB makes Reels easiest to build communities. Facebook still wins as the easiest platform to build a fan base, via groups or pages. A lot of that extends to Instagram’s feature set. TikTok focuses on viral clips and cycling through videos very fast to train their machine learning algorithm. Meanwhile YouTube famous’ algorithm is still the best at maintaining engagement through its ‘watchtime metrics’.

Monetization

All three platforms TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts have announced their "shorts fund" incentive monetization, where users are rewarded according to each internal criteria with one time payments. Up until now, YouTube is still the only video platform with dependable passive monetization, on top of these incentive funds. With established CPM based AdSense, copyright management via Content ID, enterprise partners such as Collab Asia, YouTube premium and a host of alternative monetization options, YouTube by default wins this criteria. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best solution so far. 

Both TikTok and Instagram do have very interesting e-commerce capabilities, which enables the creator economy to participate by setting up their own stores selling merchandise, original lines and even digital goods/NFTs. I am looking forward to further developments in this. For now, content creators outside of YouTube generate revenues from endorsement or paid partnership on TikTok and Instagram through brand integration and sponsorships.  

Podcasts

It’s worth noting that the audio content space in Southeast Asia has grown tremendously in Indonesia and the Philippines. The popularity of the format has been driven by the need for a visual content break and the need to fill screenless moments such as cooking, cleaning, resting and contemplating. Podcasts is mostly known for long form, but there is a recent trend for shorter produced content for religious & spiritual connection, horoscopes, news and short stories.