Views on long-form YouTube videos have skyrocketed over the past year while ads against them have halved, according to a new report from social media tool Metricool.
The report provides an overview of 799,718 videos from 71,177 accounts worldwide, comparing data from February 2025 to February 2026. Most of the statistics are averages per post. Metricool sells YouTube editing and reporting tools, and this data is obtained from accounts connected to its platform.
A Look at the Rose While Each Look Gets Shorter
In February 2026, the average long-form video received 5,985 views, a 76% increase from 3,405 the previous year. The average watch duration decreased from 3.98 minutes to 2.51 minutes, a decrease of 37%. Despite the shorter times, the average minutes viewed per post still increased by 11%, due to the higher number of views. Engagement metrics also declined: engagement per view dropped from 2.38% to 1.30%. The total number of interactions per post decreased slightly from 81.14 to 77.93, indicating that the decrease is due to larger view counts rather than a decrease in user interaction.
Where It Goes In
The money figures went the other way.
Post ad impressions fell from 976.32 to 475.07. Monetization performance, which means views with an ad against it, decreased from 576.41 to 237.92. Metricool’s ad revenue per post went from $2.65 to $1.20, and YouTube Premium’s average revenue went from $0.34 to $0.19.
Metricool attributes this to the length of the load time, saying that the less time spent on each video leaves fewer opportunities to insert an ad mid-video.
What the Report Doesn’t Address
Metricool does not show if the same accounts appear in both windows; the report shows only two months. It doesn’t have separate account or video statistics for each year, so account fluctuations can shake up the averages. It excludes accounts that haven’t published anything and posted invisible or zero engagement, doesn’t remove outliers, and doesn’t provide location data. YouTube says CPM varies by location of viewers as advertisers choose which locations to target, so the final gap is directly related to revenue figures.
The report provides monetization statistics for long-form video only. It describes its performance metrics but not monetization performance, ad impressions or revenue amounts, so how those rankings are constructed is not mentioned.
Why This Matters
The increasing number of views no longer follows the increase in ad delivery in this data. The two went in different directions during the year.
The gap changes how important the view is as a reporting number. A channel that focused solely on viewing would record growth during a period when ad delivery was declining.
Looking Forward
Metricool did not specify what caused the split. Its data cannot distinguish between changes in YouTube’s ad programs and differences in the accounts, videos, and audiences shown in each window.
YouTube’s help pages list a number of reasons why a view may be ad-free, such as videos that are not suitable for advertisers or views where there are no ads. They also explain that CPM is linked to a variety of ad formats available, which the report does not exclude. Interpreting this as a platform-wide change may be asking too much for different Februarys within a single instrument’s account data.
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