Youtube to pay more to creators amidst TikTok competition

Since TikTok has become the preferred platform for creators, YouTube decided to give more opportunities to make money to creator in order to compete with Chinese video sharing platform.

In an event called “Made on YouTube” this week, the Google-owned company announced that it is lowering the bar for creators to make money on the platform by introducing revenue-sharing to Shorts, its TikTok-like video-sharing service where videos can be up to 60 seconds long.

Starting in early 2023, YouTube said it will start paying Shorts producers 45% of the money made from the advertising that play in between videos.

“Clearly, short videos are a very popular format,” Said Mark Bergen, author of Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination, “It feels like every platform is kind of moving in the same way.”

Starting in early 2023, YouTube said it will start paying Shorts producers 45% of the money made from the advertising that play in between videos.

Amjad Hanif, vice president of product management and creator products at YouTube, reportedly made the initial announcement of these changes during an all-hands staff meeting on Sept. 15. Hanif described the change as “the largest expansion” that YouTube’s monetization program has undergone in a number of years. According to specialists in the tech sector, the action appears to show that YouTube is attempting to maintain creative allegiance as Chinese-owned TikTok’s popularity soars.

For its part, YouTube says that a monetization option for short-form content has always been part of its long-term plan. “The announcements we made today are first-of-its kind and establish a new model for the due and critical compensation for mobile-first, short-form video creators,” a YouTube spokesperson said.

With more than two billion active users each month, YouTube is by far the most successful online streaming service. But it’s getting more and more obvious how popular TikTok is. In the second quarter of 2022 compared to the same period in 2019, TikTok’s average monthly active users surged by 234%, whereas YouTube’s grew by only 29%, according to statistics from app metrics platform Sensor Tower.

“What TikTok has done is sort of take YouTube’s recommendation system and Facebook’s feed features that have been criticized for prioritizing engagement and addiction, and ball it all up into a really compelling service,” Bergen was quoted as saying in Time magazine.

Moreover, TikTok has made significant headway with Gen Z consumers. According to a Pew Research study released in August, TikTok is slowly gaining ground even though YouTube is still the most popular social media network among American youths. In comparison to TikTok, which 67% of American teens use and 16% of whom use it “almost consistently,” the survey found that 95% of American teenagers use YouTube.

The next two platforms in the rankings are Instagram and Snapchat, which are used by 62% and 59% of youngsters, respectively.

The approach taken by YouTube is similar to recent changes made to its platforms by Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta in an effort to counter TikTok. Instagram has positioned Reels, a short-form video tool, as its TikTok rival ever since it launched in 2020.

However, the business has faced a variety of obstacles in expanding the service The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month citing internal Meta data that Instagram users together spend less than one-tenth of the daily time on Reels as TikTok users do on TikTok.