I wanted to know one thing: what actually gets watched when marketers put themselves on YouTube.
So I counted. 48 of the best-known marketers, from Alex Hormozi to Mark Ritson. Every video they appear in with more than 10,000 views, on their own channels and on everyone else's.
34,088 videos. 5.85 billion views.
Then I split every video by length: YouTube Shorts, other videos under three minutes, three to ten minutes, and over ten.
The first number looks like a verdict.
Shorts carry 51% of all the views. 15,973 shorts, almost three billion views.
And then I looked at the median.
The shorts paradox
The typical marketer on this list gets 7% of their views from shorts. Not half. Seven percent.
Both numbers are true. A handful of accounts post shorts on an industrial scale, and they drag the total with them. Alex Hormozi alone has 5,319 shorts and 30% of all the shorts views in the group. Three accounts (Hormozi, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Colin and Samir) hold 43% of every view.
Look past them and the picture flips. 29 of the 48 get more than half their views from videos over ten minutes. Only 12 get more than half from shorts. Seven have no shorts at all.
Volume is not the same as reach
A short averages 187,000 views. Everything else averages 158,000. Close enough that the format alone decides nothing.
What decides it is how many, and how good:
Noah Kagan has 141 shorts. They average 1.8 million views each.
Leila Hormozi has 2,570. They average 69,000.
Alex Hormozi's other videos average 320,000 views, almost twice his shorts at 170,000.
And Iman Gadzhi has 244 million views with three shorts. (Three.)
Some of the biggest names barely have a channel
Rory Sutherland gets 1% of his views on his own channel. Seth Godin gets none. Both are watched tens of millions of times anyway: on podcasts, conference stages and clip channels run by other people.
Split the 48 into groups and each group has its own strategy:
| Group | People | Views | From shorts | Own channel, median |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Offers, growth and B2B | 13 | 3,415M | 60% | 92% |
| Brand and strategy | 7 | 1,263M | 32% | 1% |
| Social and creators | 7 | 631M | 48% | 93% |
| E-commerce and DTC | 5 | 266M | 60% | 99% |
| Meta ads and creative | 6 | 164M | 49% | 96% |
| Copy and email | 7 | 75M | 10% | 33% |
| SEO and content | 3 | 34M | 1% | 88% |
Brand strategists live on other people's channels. E-commerce and growth marketers live on shorts. SEO people barely touch them.
All 48, side by side
Views from videos over 10,000 views. “From shorts” and “Over 10 min” are shares of each person's views; “Own channel” is the share watched on channels they run.
| Name | Views | From shorts | Over 10 min | Own channel |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alex Hormozi | 1,270M | 71% | 25% | 88% |
| Gary Vaynerchuk | 761M | 54% | 32% | 89% |
| Colin and Samir | 491M | 61% | 36% | 93% |
| Simon Sinek | 453M | 16% | 58% | 43% |
| Noah Kagan | 344M | 73% | 18% | 95% |
| Scott Galloway | 336M | 33% | 49% | 45% |
| Shaan Puri | 325M | 84% | 15% | 99% |
| Sam Parr | 321M | 84% | 16% | 99% |
| Chris Do | 318M | 61% | 28% | 98% |
| Leila Hormozi | 254M | 70% | 27% | 96% |
| Iman Gadzhi | 244M | 0% | 93% | 82% |
| Davie Fogarty | 193M | 80% | 19% | 97% |
| Neil Patel | 93M | 14% | 19% | 85% |
| Sabri Suby | 93M | 72% | 23% | 95% |
| Rory Sutherland | 72M | 38% | 56% | 1% |
| Seth Godin | 68M | 0% | 82% | 0% |
| Paddy Galloway | 58M | 0% | 82% | 59% |
| Dan Koe | 56M | 10% | 85% | 92% |
| Vanessa Lau | 53M | 7% | 81% | 95% |
| Steve Chou | 39M | 6% | 92% | 99% |
| Russell Brunson | 36M | 1% | 28% | 33% |
| Pat Flynn | 33M | 7% | 76% | 97% |
| Ben Heath | 29M | 7% | 78% | 100% |
| Jordan Platten | 23M | 6% | 90% | 98% |
| Brian Dean | 20M | 0% | 85% | 88% |
| Lenny Rachitsky | 19M | 1% | 99% | 97% |
| Marty Neumeier | 15M | 2% | 70% | 0% |
| Ezra Firestone | 15M | 1% | 24% | 62% |
| Alex Cattoni | 15M | 10% | 62% | 98% |
| Jade Beason | 14M | 6% | 86% | 98% |
| Brendan Kane | 12M | 79% | 17% | 83% |
| Ryan Deiss | 12M | 2% | 35% | 26% |
| Mark Builds Brands | 10M | 9% | 84% | 99% |
| Nicolas Cole | 9.7M | 2% | 73% | 27% |
| Ash Melwani | 8.6M | 10% | 90% | 100% |
| Matt Diggity | 8.4M | 2% | 64% | 94% |
| Jay Clouse | 7.9M | 1% | 98% | 95% |
| Chase Dimond | 7.0M | 78% | 20% | 99% |
| Nathan Gotch | 5.8M | 3% | 88% | 82% |
| Amy Porterfield | 4.5M | 0% | 61% | 1% |
| Dara Denney | 4.5M | 8% | 71% | 96% |
| Joanna Wiebe | 4.1M | 0% | 98% | 100% |
| Justin Welsh | 3.4M | 0% | 90% | 0% |
| Rachel Karten | 3.3M | 0% | 2% | 0% |
| Billy Gene | 3.1M | 0% | 36% | 3% |
| Dan Kennedy | 2.5M | 0% | 78% | 0% |
| Harry Dry | 1.7M | 2% | 86% | 2% |
| Mark Ritson | 1.6M | 0% | 59% | 0% |
How I counted. Own channels are counted in full: every upload, short and live stream. Videos on other channels were found by searching each name, and they count when the name is in the title, description or channel name.
That makes them a floor: a clip channel that never names the person is missed. A deeper pass on Rory Sutherland alone found 840 videos, against 527 here. Shaan Puri and Sam Parr share My First Million, so it is counted once in the totals. Collected in October 2026.
So what does this have to do with you?
None of the big numbers here came from guessing. Noah Kagan did not out-post Leila Hormozi. He posted 141 shorts to her 2,570, and each one averages about 26 times the views.
Your competitors are running the same experiment in public right now: their ads, their posts, their videos. Most of what they try dies quietly. What survives is worth watching.
Pick one competitor and see what is already working for them. The first benchmark is free: one domain, measured against you, no card and no call.
Pick one competitor. See what we find.
Your first benchmark is free. One domain, measured against you, no card and no call.