YouTube launches its ad revenue sharing plan with creators for its short video format in February
YouTube’s commitment to Shorts, its competitor to TikTok in the field of short videos, will have a new monetisation scheme from February to encourage creators to use the format. The company has informed that those who wish to benefit from these revenues will have to accept the new conditions included in the Partner programme before 10 July, which enable the inclusion of advertisements in these short videos as a replacement for the fund that has so far offered them money to produce them.
In addition, creators will have to prove that they have more than 1,000 subscribers and at least 10 million targeted views on Shorts in the last 90 days. In the new terms, the revenue streams are distributed in a new way: on the one hand, the area that refers to the ads served in their long videos and YouTube Premium; on the other, the one that will allow them to earn money with campaigns introduced between the short pieces, either in the aggregate of the format or in YouTube Premium; and finally there is the one that informs them of what they get for functionalities of direct injection of money from followers such as membership.
Creators will have to agree to new terms of use by 10 July and prove a minimum number of plays on the format in order to benefit from the scheme.
YouTubers who meet the conditions to enter or remain in the Partner programme will be able to activate any of these modules, and the one that refers specifically to Shorts is the one that will allow them to earn money from 1 February with advertising interspersed between these contents. The final result of this scheme for them will be more complex to calculate, as the platform will give them 45% of the total, as opposed to the traditional 55% in billings for advertisements in long videos, but it is previously subject to music licensing agreements that will be paid collectively with a part of everything generated by the creators. YouTube then allocates revenue individually according to each creator’s share of total Shorts views.
It should be noted that only the authors of original short films are eligible for this money. That is to say, those that do not correspond to fragments of third-party content under rights or are compilations of what third parties have made for YouTube or any other platform. The latter is key to encouraging exclusive creation and forms part of initiatives such as the one Instagram took at the time to avoid including in its algorithmic recommendations videos uploaded from TikTok, the great rival of both.
It now remains to be seen what impact this programme will have on YouTube’s accounts, after Google acknowledged in recent earnings presentations that encouraging the consumption of Shorts was producing a loss of revenue from ads in longer videos that are not consumed. The monetisation of short-form video is a general challenge for all platforms competing for the favour of popular creators and the attention of their followers, as it offers more problems in tailoring creative that is effective.
