How YouTube is calculating creators’ ad-revenue shares for Shorts
Starting next month, YouTube will share ad revenue with Shorts creators. However, the originator of the creator ad revenue-sharing program has introduced a new twist with its short-form video service.
Unlike YouTube’s traditional revenue-sharing program or TikTok’s revenue-sharing program Pulse, YouTube is not attaching ads to individual Shorts videos in order to directly split revenue with creators and publishers. Instead, it will pool revenue to divvy up among eligible Shorts makers — but only after accounting for the platform’s music licensing costs.
In other words, the YouTube Shorts revenue-sharing model isn’t as simple as “advertiser pays platform, platform gives creator a cut.” Calculating how YouTube Shorts ad revenue will be split is more like doing taxes than basic arithmetic, as the video below breaks down.
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