Shorts now averages 200 billion daily views, a figure YouTube CEO Neal Mohan announced at Cannes Lions. That is a lot of inventory, and most of it is a lottery. A YouTube Shorts premium placement is the closest thing to controlling where your brand lands in that feed. Here is how to use it.
What “premium” means on Shorts
The product is called YouTube Select Shorts. Social Media Today reported that it lets advertisers place ads alongside top Shorts content across five categories: Entertainment, Beauty, Fashion & Lifestyle, Food & Recipes, Gaming, and Automotive.
Note what it is not. It is not a guaranteed first-swipe slot, and it is not a takeover format like TikTok TopView. It is a curated lineup. You are buying adjacency to proven content, which matters because in a vertical feed, the video before yours sets the viewer’s mood.
Why does that matter for a brand? Brand safety and context. Standard Shorts delivery can put you next to anything. A curated lineup narrows the variance, and variance is what your CMO actually worries about.
The scale argument, and its limits
The audience case is easy. According to YouTube, Shorts are viewed by 2 billion logged-in users every month. Mohan’s keynote figure, covered by TheWrap, also shows how fast the format has grown: in March of 2024, YouTube reported Shorts averaged 70 billion daily views.
Scale is not the same as attention. Many Shorts views are passive thumb-flicks. Premium lineups are meant to give your creative a better chance of being watched, but YouTube does not publish a universal lift number for Select Shorts. Treat any promised uplift as a hypothesis you test.
Premium placement buys better neighbors, not better creative. If the first two seconds of your ad fail, the lineup will not save you.
Proof points worth knowing
Google’s own Shorts ads page collects brand case studies. These are vendor-selected wins, so read them as directional, not as benchmarks:
- Urban Decay ran a creator-led Shorts strategy and, per Google’s Shorts ads page, drove a 278% lift in searches and a 3% lift in purchase intent, outperforming L’Oreal USA benchmarks.
- eBay used creator-made ads, and Google reports its Shorts ads drove 57% higher click-through rates than its standard ads.
- Unilever’s Liquid I.V. partnered with creators and used YouTube Select Shorts, and Google credits the campaign with a best-in-class view through rate and an 8% uplift in brand recall.
Spot the pattern. Two of the three leaned on creators for the creative itself. The placement and the creative worked together, which is the real lesson.
A playbook for buying the lineup
Here is the sequence I would run for a first test.
- Pick one category, not five. Match your product to the closest lineup. A skincare launch belongs in Beauty, Fashion & Lifestyle. A new SUV belongs in Automotive. If your product fits none, premium placement is probably not your lever.
- Build native creative. Google recommends Shorts ads of under 60 seconds to match user behavior, even though ads can run up to three minutes. Shoot vertical, lead with the payoff, and use a human face early.
- Brief creators, then run their content as ads. Creator-voiced assets are where the case studies above got their results. Lock usage rights before you spend. Our licensing audit approach for TikTok applies equally here: get paid-usage terms, duration, and whitelisting in writing.
- Hold a control. Run an identical creative set in standard Shorts delivery. Without that cell, you cannot say whether the lineup did anything.
- Measure beyond views. Use brand lift studies, branded search, and view-through rate. Cost per view will flatter you and teach you nothing.
Where it fits against other YouTube buys
Select Shorts is a reach and brand-recall tool. It sits beside, not in place of, your other YouTube spend.
For sponsorship, creator integrations in long-form still carry deeper intent. If you are weighing that tradeoff, read our breakdown of the mid-roll sponsorship shift. For bidding, the smart bidding settings guide covers how automation can quietly drain a premium budget into cheaper placements.
That last point deserves a flag. Google notes that Demand Gen, App, and Performance Max campaigns generally do not allow you to toggle off other placements to run exclusively on Shorts. If your goal is Shorts-only exposure, check campaign type before you commit budget. Video Reach and Video View campaigns can run exclusively on Shorts by opting into multi-format ads and selecting the Shorts placement.
Is the creator side keeping up?
The friction is on the creator side: Digiday also noted that Shorts RPMs are generally lower than long-form, and that algorithm opacity makes some creators wary of investing in the format.
For you, that means two things. Expect creators to price Shorts deliverables carefully, and expect quality to vary. Vet for hook craft, not follower count. The same logic applies to originality rules on other platforms, as in our Reels collab scripting guide.
Risks to manage
- Category mismatch. Only five lineups exist. Forcing a fit wastes money.
- Disclosure. Creator-made ads still need clear paid-partnership labeling under the rules of the markets you run in.
- Unproven benchmarks. Public numbers come from advertiser case studies. Build your own baseline.
Next step: pick one product, one lineup category, and one creator-voiced asset. Run it against a standard Shorts control for four weeks and judge it on brand lift, not views.
FAQs
What is YouTube Select Shorts?
It is YouTube’s premium placement option for Shorts ads. It lets advertisers run alongside top-performing Shorts in curated categories: Entertainment, Beauty, Fashion & Lifestyle, Food & Recipes, Gaming, and Automotive.
Is a YouTube Shorts premium placement guaranteed to be the first video a viewer sees?
No source I reviewed says so. It is a curated lineup, so you are buying adjacency to strong content, not a fixed position in the feed.
How long should a Shorts ad be?
Shorts ads can run up to three minutes, but Google recommends keeping them under 60 seconds to match how people watch Shorts. For a premium test, shorter and hook-first is the safer default.
Can I run a campaign exclusively on Shorts?
Video Reach (Efficient Reach) and Video View campaigns can, by opting into multi-format ads and choosing the Shorts placement. Demand Gen, App, and Performance Max are cross-network and generally do not let you turn off other placements.
Should I use creators or brand-made assets?
Google’s published case studies for Urban Decay, eBay, and Liquid I.V. all involved creators. Test both against each other, and secure paid-usage rights before running creator content as ads.
How do I know if premium placement is worth the cost?
Run a control with the same creative in standard Shorts delivery. Compare brand lift, branded search, and view-through rate rather than raw views or cost per view.
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