YouTube are reportedly paying big creators thousands of dollars to abandon traditional video uploads and use “Shorts” to compete against TikTok.
Are the days of traditional YouTube videos over? The video sharing giant is reportedly encouraging big creators to upload “Shorts” or rather short-form content to compete with TikTok.
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Many popular YouTubers have seen a massive drop in revenue earnings ever since YouTube introduced their own TikTok competitor in the shape of short-form content simply called YouTube Shorts. Now the Google owned video-sharing platform appears to be attempting to discourage original content creators from uploading long-form content by lowering revenue by cutting ad-fill rates for said content.
Hundreds of big YouTubers have reported seeing a massive decline in ad revenue earnings since YouTube introduced their TikTok competitor system YouTube Shorts late last year. Some have alleged seeing their revenue drop by as much as 60% since September 2020.
Ad fill rates and CPM (cost per thousand impressions) have severely dropped, and have remained low, since YouTube introduced Shorts in September, 2020. Many mid-sized channels with hundreds of thousand daily views have resorted in pushing their membership platform accounts such as Patreon and SubscribeStar to recover lost YouTube revenue earnings.
Why did YouTube CPM drop?
According to a source close to YouTube, the video streaming giant has not been entirely transparent with their creator earnings and that missing revenue is going straight into the pockets of creators who are using YouTube’s so-called TikTok killer new app “Shorts.”
BallerAlert reports that YouTube creators are earning as much as USD$10,000 a month for uploading “Shorts” (short-form videos ala TikTok) and that extra cash is being subsidized by the missing ad revenue from other creator’s videos.
Sadly, these bonuses are only available to a select group of YouTube approved creators with millions of subscribers. So, if you’ve been earning a good amount of money from the YouTube Partner Programme you will likely continue to see it drop over the coming months.
YouTube is killing long-form video content.
It’s evident that YouTube is trying to replicate the success of TikTok and wants to directly compete against them with their own short-form video model. Despite not having any time of official monetisation system, like the YouTube Partner Programme, millions of YouTubers are flocking to TikTok because of the viewability and reach of their content.
Most TikTok creators earn their money through partnership and sponsorship deals and not through a CPM ad revenue share system like YouTube or Twitch TV. However, due to TikTok’s algorithm and discoverability many popular YouTubers are slowly abandoning YouTube for the former service.
It truly does look like that short-form content is the future on YouTube and Google/Alphabet are putting all their eggs in that basket ultimately killing off their long-form video content by discouraging creators from uploading lengthy videos by reducing ad-revenue and discoverability.