Luminate: 57% of the youngest adults discover titles via short-form video, ahead of browsing streaming services at 55%; among viewers 65+, TV ads and trailers lead at 57% and short-form trails at 16%
In Luminate's U.S. survey, 57% of 18-to-24-year-olds find new movies and shows through short-form video, the only age group where it ranks first. Viewers 65+ lean on TV ads (57%) and word of mouth (58%). Netflix and Disney+ now run vertical feeds; 82.2% of Koreans in their 20s use short-form.
Short-form video is now the leading way young American adults find something new to watch. In Luminate's October report, Social Media & Entertainment Discovery, 57% of U.S. viewers aged 18 to 24 said they discover movies and TV shows through short-form social video. That edged out browsing within streaming services, at 55%.
No other age group puts short-form video first. Among 25-to-34-year-olds it falls to 37%, behind streaming browsing (45%) and word of mouth (40%). Among viewers 65 and older it drops to 16%, while TV commercials and trailers reach 57% and word of mouth 58%. The figures come from Luminate's quarterly U.S. Entertainment 365 consumer survey.
Luminate locates the driver in mobile-first viewing habits rather than in the vertical format itself, Señal News reported on Nov. 2. Instead of carousels of poster tiles, younger viewers scroll algorithmic feeds where they run into clips from shows and films, or fan-made edits of them.
Netflix and Disney+ both responded this spring by adding vertical video feeds, Clips and Verts, to their mobile apps, an attempt to pull social-media browsing habits inside their own services. In Korea, TVING (티빙) has moved the same way with a shorts tab and original short-form comedy.
Short-form 57%, streaming browsing 55%: four discovery routes top 50% for 18-to-24s
Viewers aged 18 to 24 are the only group in which four of the five discovery routes clear 50%: short-form video at 57%, streaming browsing at 55%, word of mouth at 53% and traditional social media at 52%. TV commercials and trailers trail at 33%. Luminate's browsing figure averages three responses: browsing recommendations, browsing categories or genres, and browsing trending or popular titles.
The pull of social is stronger among moviegoers. In Luminate figures compiled by eMarketer, frequent moviegoers aged 18 to 24 find films through traditional social media (67%) and short-form video (62%). Music follows the same pattern: 53% of listeners in that age group discover new music and artists via short-form video, against 55% through audio and video streaming services.
TV ads overtake short-form from age 45; the gap hits 41 points at 65+
Subtract TV ads and trailers from short-form video and the lead belongs to short-form by 24 points among 18-to-24-year-olds. The two are tied at 37% for 25-to-34s, and short-form is ahead by two points for 35-to-44s. From there the order flips: TV ads lead by 26 points among 45-to-54-year-olds (48% vs 22%), by 32 points among 55-to-64s and by 41 points among those 65 and older.
Word of mouth climbs with age, from 40% among 25-to-34s to 58% among the oldest group. Streaming browsing moves the other way, from 55% among 18-to-24s to 30% among those 65 and over, meaning subscribers of the same service pick titles inside the app at very different rates depending on age.
Other research points the same way. A YouGov survey of 2,035 British adults in March found that 77% of people who had seen a TV or film clip on social media went on to watch the full programme; 69% of 16-to-24-year-olds watch short-form video daily. In January, Hub Entertainment Research reported that well over half of U.S. viewers aged 13 to 34 find new shows and movies through clips on TikTok and Instagram.
Netflix Clips, Disney+ Verts: the vertical feed moves inside the app
Disney+ launched Verts in its U.S. mobile app in March. A tap on the Verts icon in the navigation bar opens a vertical stream of scenes from Disney+ films and series, each of which can be added to a watchlist or played in full. Disney first outlined the plan at its 2026 Global Tech & Data Showcase during CES in January, after introducing a feed of the same name in the ESPN app in August 2025, and said early tests had lifted engagement. In August, a deal with TikTok let creators use Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters in videos on TikTok and in the Verts feed.
Netflix unveiled Clips with a redesigned mobile app on April 30. The app now runs on four tabs, Home, Clips, Search and My Netflix, and serves personalized clips of 30 seconds to just over a minute that viewers can save, share or use to jump straight into a title. Elizabeth Stone, Netflix's chief product and technology officer, described mobile as a key way members stay connected to the entertainment they love. The feature launched in the U.S. and selected markets before expanding globally over the summer.
Peacock has opened Your Bravoverse, a mobile hub for scripted and unscripted microdramas. While streaming services pull short-form into their apps, YouTube keeps gaining on the living-room screen: it accounted for 15.8% of U.S. TV viewing in August, according to Nielsen's The Gauge.
82.2% of Koreans in their 20s use short-form; TVING answers with shorts and 'Comedy Short League'
In the 2025 Content Usage Survey (2025 콘텐츠 이용행태 조사) by Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (문화체육관광부) and the Korea Creative Content Agency (한국콘텐츠진흥원, KOCCA), 58.6% of 6,554 respondents aged 10 and older used short-form content, rising to 82.2% among people in their 20s and 76.3% among teens. Among 3,842 short-form users, 93.4% had used YouTube Shorts, far ahead of Instagram Reels (30.9%) and TikTok (21.1%). In the Korea Communications Commission's (방송통신위원회) 2024 Broadcasting Media Usage Survey, short-form (41.8%) was the most preferred content type on smartphones, ahead of streaming services (39.4%).
TVING added a vertical short-form service to its mobile app in December 2024 and launched the TVING Short Original (티빙 숏 오리지널) drama label in 2025. On June 15 this year it premiered Comedy Short League (코미디 숏리그), billed as the first short-form comedy league on a Korean streaming service, in which comedians and up-and-coming creators compete in teams for weekly rankings. YouTube said on Oct. 27 that views of short-form dramas on YouTube in Korea rose more than 130% year on year between July 2025 and June 2026.
Korean surveys do not ask Luminate's discovery question, so a direct comparison is not possible. But 82.2% short-form use among people in their 20s, concentrated on YouTube Shorts, runs in the same direction as the U.S. figures for 18-to-24-year-olds.
Trailers reach the 45-plus audience; broadcaster clips move ahead of the premiere
Applied to Korean broadcasters' promotion, Luminate's numbers suggest that on-air promos and spot ads mainly reach viewers 45 and older: 48% of Americans aged 45 to 54 and 57% of those 55 and over find titles that way, against 33% of 18-to-24-year-olds. Korea's terrestrial networks, general-programming cable channels and CJ ENM already distribute scenes through YouTube clip channels. The U.S. finding that 57% of the youngest adults decide what to watch through short-form video argues for using those clips before a premiere as a discovery tool, not only as post-broadcast recycling.
The contest for time inside apps follows the same line. In WiseApp·Retail data for May, Netflix held 37.8% of users among major Korean streaming apps but 57.7% of usage time, while Coupang Play (쿠팡플레이) had 24.4% of users and 6.5% of time. Subscribers who are not steered to a next title inside the app do not translate into time spent, and that is the step Netflix's and Disney's vertical feeds target.
The same applies to international distribution. With Clips now global, scenes from Korean titles licensed to Netflix can surface in the feed, making clip editing rights and secondary-use terms a likely new item in licensing talks.
Outlook: Netflix plans podcasts and live content for Clips
Luminate puts short-form video and streaming browsing two points apart among 18-to-24-year-olds. Streaming services' vertical feeds are an attempt to win back that discovery step inside their own apps. Netflix plans to add video podcasts, live streams and genre collections to Clips, and Disney has said it will extend Verts to creator content and new formats. Disney+ and Paramount+ are expected to commission original microdramas.
Two numbers will be worth watching in coming survey waves: whether streaming browsing rises among 18-to-24-year-olds after the vertical feeds roll out, and whether today's 25-to-34-year-olds keep their short-form habits as they age. For Korean broadcasters and producers, the task is to plan TV promos and short-form clips as separate channels, aimed at viewers over 45 and at those in their early 20s respectively.