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Google revealed that more than 1.5 billion people watch YouTube Shorts every month, showing that the short-video service had reached a similar scale to rival app TikTok after only two years.
Google also reported that Shorts has 30 billion views per day as of April 2022. The overall monthly ‘logged in’ audience on YouTube is 2 billion people.
Debuted in 2020 as a response to TikTok’s rise, Shorts have progressively found its way across the platform, including in-app recommendations, and the business has incorporated further TikTok-like capabilities, such as sampling.
TikTok said in September that it had hit 1 billion monthly users, the most recent time it has published such information publicly.
YouTube’s Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan said in a statement, “While we’re still at the beginning of our journey with Shorts, we know the product will continue to be an integral part of the YouTube experience moving forward.”
Mohan added, “What we’ve seen is that creators are getting really innovative with how they use these multiple formats on the platform.”
Rise of creators or lured by monetization?
In a press release, YouTube claimed that the expansion has ushered in a new trend on the platform: ‘the rise of the multiformat creator.’
But according to The Verge, the increase in creators making short-form videos on the platform is not a coincidence.
Last year, the company introduced a $100 million Shorts fund, which compensated famous creators up to $10,000 per month. Payment varied based on viewers’ engagement and location.
However, the fund was not intended to be a long-term mechanism for creators to monetize shorts.
YouTube said in a February blog post that it was looking into other ways for creators to make money, including branded content and the option to purchase directly from a Shorts video.
According to TechCrunch, the firm began rolling out ads on Shorts globally in May, though it did not share ad money with creators at the time.
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Jaw de Guzman is the content producer for Comms Room, a knowledge platform and website aimed at assisting the communications industry and its professionals.
