Question about monetizing short videos - adsense

This is more of a white-hat question, but I suppose could be useful to black-hat as well.

I haven't been able to find a definitive answer as to how short videos effect monetized earnings. I have a channel that had a total of 7 videos that had earned $75 in November and $135 in December. Average video length of these videos is around 2-5 minutes. Granted one of the videos brings in 85% of the monetized earnings, they were all getting a cumulative view count of around 1.5k/day.

I decided to branch out in this same channel and create shorter videos that are relevant to the channel (added 40+ videos), but these videos are only 20s to 60s long max. I uploaded these at the very end of December (29th-31st) and since I'm getting around 7k views/day (+~500%) from everything which is a nice little jump.

The only problem is my estimated earnings per day is still right where it was before, if not a little less.

Let me say I've only been youtubing for 2 months now, but this got me wondering a few things about adsense:

1) Is the length of the video a factor whether a view is considered for certain types of auction ads or not? Ex. Will a TrueView In-stream ad (full-screen skip-able ad) be less likely to show on a shorter video? This seems to be where a bulk of my previous earnings came from (much higher CPM).

2) As far as the bottom overlay ads which usually start around 10-15s in a video, is there a threshold of time where they have to be visible before they are counted as a monetized view, or is it simply "the ad was shown and you get paid for it." A lot of these new 30-60s videos are showing these ads but near the middle to end of the video.

3) Also... I'm hoping this is true... Since I uploaded right at the end of the month (or because they're new videos), am I being subjected to a lag period where "real estimated earnings" are just not yet being reported? As of the today the 3rd, there is still "no data" available for any of January, but the 29th-31st earnings numbers seem low compared to previous days with 1/7th the views.

Thanks for any comments and I will report back on any findings and/or updates on my end!

Without getting into a lot of specifics, I would simply recommend that you continue creating quality, engaging content that your viewers actually want to watch. But YouTube tends to focus more on those videos that increase the amount of time that the viewer will spend watching videos on YouTube. If viewers are watching for longer periods, it signals to YouTube that they're happier with the content they've found and opens up more opportunities to generate revenue. You shouldn't intentionally make your videos shorter in an attempt to get a higher retention rate.

Make your videos at least 3min longer

Without getting into a lot of specifics, I would simply recommend that you continue creating quality, engaging content that your viewers actually want to watch. But YouTube tends to focus more on those videos that increase the amount of time that the viewer will spend watching videos on YouTube. If viewers are watching for longer periods, it signals to YouTube that they?re happier with the content they?ve found and opens up more opportunities to generate revenue. You shouldn't intentionally make your videos shorter in an attempt to get a higher retention rate.

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Then I am assuming that I may be being penalized just for having short videos? Because of the content, I'm sort of in a grey area as far as whether you would call the videos quality because of their duration. Here's the deal: Its a gaming niche. Specifically games where there are 80+ levels. What I've done is split each level into its own video as Player A may only be having trouble with level 5 so they will search specifically for that level. Looking at the analytics this seems to be the case as the view counts are drastically different depending on the level's difficulty -- ie level 8 has 3000 views the last 4 days, while level 9 only has 400.

Now what I *could* do is put these levels into blocks of 10 (L1-L10) which would increase the video duration, but I would expect viewers to skip to the level they need, therefor skipping past overlay ads and bringing the retention way down. But maybe the added video time would increase TrueView In-stream ads, which ultimately have a much much higher payout rate?

Again, view count is not really an issue here -- its whether viewers are being shown the ads and I'm getting credit for them. As of 1/2/14, my views/day are up ~533% from a week ago, but actual revenue is down about 60%, including the original "breadwinner" videos.

Make your videos at least 3min longer

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Do you have any experience with youtube adsense that would help the thread? I promise I'm not trying to be rude, but your comment provides very little value. When I create threads I try to be as thorough as possible as somewhere down the line someone else is going to have these same questions. It would be great to have a good thread to reference with quality information and responses. Otherwise, we end up with 10 threads on the exact same topic with little information. Just sayin

Thanks again!

As I said before, you should concentrate more on creating quality, engaging and helpful content, and if you feel that splitting your videos into a series of short clips is better for your viewers then by all means feel free do that. Don't worry so much about optimizing for AdSense.