YouTube plans to share revenue with Shorts creators

YouTube has announced that it will be introducing advertisements on to its short video product, YouTube Shorts. Additionally, to incentivise creators on to its platform from rivals such as Instagram and TikTok, the company announced it will share 45% of ad revenue with them.

Reported by New York Times, this move pits YouTube Shorts against TikTok's $1 billion fund for creator payouts, which has seen the company become a household social media name, despite its ban in India. YouTube itself currently has a standard distribution of 55% of ad revenue for non-Shorts content creators.

Popular YouTube creator Kris Collins, who runs a channel called Kallmekris, lauded YouTube for its diverse content creation avenues. At the time of publication, Kallmekris has 7.36 million subscribers on YouTube.

"Other platforms are focused on getting people their 15 seconds of fame, which is great," she said, according to Reuters. "But YouTube is taking a different approach. They're helping creators make stuff in multiple formats."

YouTube created Shorts in 2020 as a response to the success of TikTok globally, and had initially announced at $100 million fund for Shorts creators in April 2022. Their new attempt to provide revenue sharing might be able to provide creators with a more sustainable and larger incentive to continue creating content for YouTube.