It has been reported by The New York Times that YouTube would
provide content creators with a direct monetization option for Shorts,
with the help of ad integration.
“The company plans to pay creators 45 percent of the ad
money,” says NYT, mentioning an audio source that gave out the news. In addition
to that, YouTube would also make changes to the criteria for applying to
the YouTube Partner Program, which would make it easier for creators to
make money from their Shorts content.
Generally, the requirement for YPP includes reaching 4,000 total public watch hours on your channel in the past 12 months and having over 1,000 subscribers to make the YPP cut. Since it is not possible to get that much of total watch time on Shorts, YouTube has considered lowering the count. Similarly, reducing the subscriber count would also assist beginner creators in maximizing their presence on the platform via Shorts.
Considering the popularity of Shorts on YouTube, where the
short-form videos gain views from 1.5 billion YouTube users per month, the new
monetization option could be seen as a way of furthering the growth of Shorts.
Some YouTube users have already begin spotting clusters of
ten ads displayed in Shorts clips. YouTube later clarified that the ads altogether
are only 6 seconds long. Running multiple ads with a short play-time suggests
that YouTube has finally figured a way of rolling ads in between short-form
videos. In case this test is official, then YouTube has successfully resolved
the monetization issue with short-form content, which would likely then inspire
platforms like TikTok and Instagram to do the same.
