Vertical Video Has Conquered Social Media
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- Snap launched Stories in late 2013 as CEO Evan Spiegel's "totally new way to share your day with friends," and Instagram had copied the feature by August 2016 — then-CEO Kevin Systrom said Snapchat "deserve all the credit"
- TikTok launched in the US in 2018 after success as Douyin in China and Musical.ly elsewhere, combining Stories' vertical format with YouTube-style permanence and a default algorithmic For You page
- Meta said in 2024 that Instagram users spent more than half their time in Reels, and in 2025 called Reels a $50 billion annual business across its apps
- YouTube reported 200 billion daily Shorts views at the end of 2025, earning more money per watch hour than standard YouTube videos
- Disney, Netflix, and Spotify are all building TikTok-style vertical feeds: Disney launched "Verts" for ESPN and Disney Plus; Netflix, Prime Video, and Paramount Plus branded their short-clip feeds "Clips"; Spotify added a vertical-scrolling video feed
- Pew Research found about 63% of young adults and teens use TikTok, with one in five teens on the app "almost constantly"
- A HubSpot report found short-form video was by a wide margin both the most-used and most successful marketing content format in 2025
Why it matters: Meta's Reels has become a $50 billion annual business, and Facebook is reportedly testing a Reels-only open screen. As YouTube's Brian Albert told the author, AI now powers everything from audience targeting to the actual ad creative once clients supply multi-format assets — meaning the more vertical video wins, the cheaper it gets for advertisers to standardize across every platform.
