In the GEO sourcing battle, long-form video is shining through. 

By Verity Barr – Director

Short attention spans, short of time, short-form wins. When it comes to video, that’s the mantra digital marketers have subscribed to for years. To beat the scroll, content must be short, snappy and straight to the point. I mean, come on, who has the time to spend more than 30 seconds watching anything. Thank you. Next.

But does AI have other ideas? And is our approach to video about to do a swift about-turn?

According to research by OtterlyAI, 94% of AI video citations are drawn from long-form YouTube videos, with Shorts accounting for just 5.7%. The research identified the sweet spot as videos between 10 and 20 minutes long. That’s looooooooong.

In plain English, that means that if AI is choosing sources to support its answers, it’s overwhelmingly turning to deeper, more detailed content over bite-sized clips.

Why? Because when someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, Google AI etc a question, the platform needs credible information to help it construct a useful answer. A 15 minute explainer video has context, examples, definitions, evidence and signposting. A 30 second Short has a key message and impact, but none of the above. What we’re seeing is that AI values substance over style.

Think of it this way. A Short might tell you that biodiversity net gain is important. A 15-minute video explaining biodiversity net gain legislation, implementation challenges, funding models and real-world examples gives AI multiple opportunities to extract and cite information.

The bigger surprise from the OtterlyAI study is that popularity hardly matters. Views, likes and subscriber counts showed almost no correlation with citation frequency. That flies in the face of everything digital marketers have been taught over the past decade because a well-structured expert video with 1,000 views could, in theory, generate more AI visibility than a super-cool Short with 100,000.

Traditionally, success meant building reach. In AI search, success increasingly means becoming a trusted reference. That’s a fundamentally different game. But it’s a game that creates a huge opportunity because now we need both short and long form. Two formats with two functions and two different outcomes.

Shorts will always be a powerful tool for driving awareness, building audiences and creating engagement. They are brilliant for capturing attention and raising brand profile. Sitting alongside them, long-form (should we be calling them Longs?) provides expertise, depth and detail over quick entertainment.

The smartest content strategies will use both. Shorts to spark interest, longer videos to build authority, answer complex questions and create the kind of content AI platforms are most likely to cite.

My key takeaways from this? Depth beats brevity. Expertise beats popularity. And the future belongs to content that isn’t just fun to watch, but genuinely answers the question.