As YouTube Shorts gains prominence in the short-form videos wars, Ipsy is carving out a successful space for itself.
Ipsy first began testing YouTube Shorts in April. Tina Shim, svp of brand marketing at Ipsy, said the reason to start testing was a hedge against the possibility of TikTok being banned. Ipsy currently has 3.4 million TikTok followers, making a ban a genuine concern and YouTube Shorts a potential plan B.
Initially, Ipsy’s YouTube Shorts were repurposed from existing short-form video platforms TikTok and Instagram Reels. But as the viewership of YouTube Shorts grows, Ipsy is now looking to assess how to develop and invest in original and dedicated videos. YouTube Shorts accounts for 38% of Ipsy’s social media video views and contributes to a six-figure earned media value monthly for Ipsy. Additionally, 30% of Ipsy’s social content is published on YouTube Shorts, said Tyler Wentworth, senior director of social media at Ipsy.
“Great scale and momentum is happening on YouTube shorts, and YouTube is priming people to go to their platform to watch short-form videos,” said Wentworth. “We now need to evaluate YouTube Shorts as a primary social channel, and we’re talking with our internal production team to create new, specific and original content for YouTube shorts.”
Ipsy’s content for TikTok revolves around “transactional” content, like beauty tips, tricks and quick tidbits of information, Wentworth said. In contrast, its Instagram Reels content is mostly product demonstration for that month’s subscription box. YouTube Shorts is leaning more toward entertainment, with humorous and emotional tie-in videos generating the most engagement. Ipsy’s YouTube Shorts videos had over 174,000 hours of watch time in June. Videos typically have viewership in the low four-digit range. Wentworth said Ipsy has a weekly writer’s room session, where the in-house content team comes together to discuss trending sounds, potential audio effects and online humor that could be used for upcoming short-form videos.
Ipsy is not the only brand to recently explore YouTube Shorts. Although Shorts launched in Sept. 2020, it was not until 2022 that notable brands like Glossier, Nike, Skims and Gucci were drawn to the platform. And YouTube has continued to add new features, such as shopping links, to YouTube Shorts.
Ipsy plans to dovetail its YouTube Shorts efforts with restarting its previously existing YouTube channel, which had been dormant until about March. Over the past three months, Ipsy has seen its new channel subscribers on YouTube increase by 320% to approximately 60,000 people. Ipsy has 1.42 million YouTube subscribers on its main channel. Main channel videos are published about once a week and are also short, running at just a few minutes in length. They include product tutorials and interviews with Icon Box curators like Anastasia Soare and Vanessa Hudgens. Shim said she is interested in testing the audience’s appetite for longer videos.
“[The success of YouTube Shorts] might mean that, with time, we will either [cut back] on investing in another platform or expand the team to cover that [production],” said Shim. “We haven’t enacted big changes yet because what we want to put in place first and continue testing is long-form content.”
