YouTube announced plans to insert adverts on Shorts, its service which aims to compete with TikTok. The streaming giant said that ad sales will be shared with creators of the bite-sized videos. Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan said, "We want YouTube to be the place that gives creators the greatest support in the digital landscape."
Unlike on the main YouTube site, the new program will compensate creators using a pool from ads that run in Shorts. This is similar to the way TikTok pays its popular stars, except that TikTok has a cap on the funds while YouTube plans to be fairer by paying the share of what's actually in the fund. This will ebb and flow with ad revenues.
Creators can join the YouTube partner program if they have more than 10 million views on Shorts and over 1 000 subscribers. Historically, YouTube has given 55% of its ad sales to creators and kept the remainder. However, with Shorts, YouTube will pay out 45% to creators from its ad program.
YouTube Shorts has over 1.5 billion monthly viewers and management thinks the format is ready to bring in ad revenues. The normal YouTube site has more than 2 million creators who share in the ad sales. Last year, the streaming giant reported $28 billion in ad sales, before creator payouts.