Duolingo and its unhinged inexperienced mascot, Duo, is a quintessential TikTok advertising success. However against the backdrop of a potential U.S. ban or sale of the app, the language studying app has been discovering its ft on YouTube Shorts.

Duolingo’s chief advertising officer (CMO) Manu Orssaud informed ADWEEK the model’s experiments on YouTube’s TikTok competitor have resulted in a 430% year-on-year increase in views.

Within the first quarter of 2025 alone, Duolingo noticed 300 million impressions on YouTube Shorts.

TikTok is the place the language studying app “invented” its model, mentioned Orssaud. Since 2021, it has garnered 17 million followers and 444.7 million likes by means of natural content material that faucets into trending moments, like Netflix’s Squid Video games launch or spoofing the weird morning routine of influencer Ashton Corridor.

The CMO mentioned TikTok continues to be “king” for short-form video. Nonetheless, because the social ecosystem evolves, Duolingo has been diversifying its estimated $90 million marketing budget to succeed in audiences on different platforms—and YouTube Shorts has stood out as a specific success.

Sitcoms, spoofs, and short-form wins

Duolingo isn’t alone in testing the YouTube Shorts waters.

With 2 billion monthly active users at its latest count, the platform is rapidly changing into a model go-to for short-form content material as TikTok’s fate in the U.S. hangs in the balance as soon as extra, thanks to a different extension from President Trump.

Duolingo’s journey on YouTube Shorts began in 2023, earlier than the Supreme Courtroom’s TikTok ruling, with the launch of a Full Home-esque sitcom, Residing With Lily.

The sequence facilities on the model’s various purple-haried “emo mascot” and her inexplicably human dad and mom, who dwell in “suburban hell.” Every episode isn’t any a couple of minute lengthy.

Residing With Lily’s first 10-episode run introduced in 10.5 million views and 100,000 new YouTube followers.

“It labored properly for us, so we stored going,” defined Zaria Parvez, Duolingo’s world senior social media supervisor. As soon as information of the ban broke, “the workforce was already arrange there,” she mentioned.

“I all the time joke that I like to work within the shadows and on the periphery; that’s how TikTok began for us,” she mentioned. “Now I really feel that house [for me] is YouTube. Its been our experimental channel.”