By Gavin Boyle
After years of providing subpar revenue, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan revealed that YouTube Shorts now pay out creators the same as long-form content per watch-time hour.
“It’s something that we have been working on for a while and it’s a testament to both the viewer side, but also the quality of the ad products that we build for our advertisers,” Mohan told an investor conference, per The Wrap.
Mohan also touted consistent growth in its Shorts platform which is up 20% year over year for the first quarter of 2025. The CEO also noted that 70% of YouTube channels now upload on Shorts, revealing just how vital the format has become for the creator economy.
At the same time, Mohan explained that Shorts allows the company to place more ads in front of users — as they can be interrupted by ads every minute or two on Shorts, compared to every five or 10 minutes on long-form content — which has helped them pay out at a comparable rate.
This payout makes YouTube extremely lucrative for short-form content creators as this ad revenue serves as a sustainable source of revenue. Though TikTok remains the most popular website for short-form content, it has struggled to provide creators with a sustainable way to make money on their videos apart from taking brand deals.
Related: Could YouTube Shorts Dethrone TikTok?
In 2020, TikTok attempted to subsidize its creators through a $1 billion payout fund that popular creators could draw from. This method, however, received criticism as it mostly paid out to top creators, who were not struggling to begin with, while midsize and smaller creators continued to struggle to cash in on their views.
The platform created another source of creator revenue in 2023 when it introduced the ability to paywall content, creating the option for creators to release videos that could only be viewed by those who paid for them. This method, though, has not taken off and, again, only benefits those who already have a sizable audience, rather than smaller creators who are just scraping by.
Beyond a strong monetization program, YouTube Shorts offers a variety of features that enable creators to make videos more easily, such as the recent introduction of AI-generated videos and music.
“Today, Dream Screen is getting another major upgrade with the integration of Google DeepMind’s newest video generation model, Veo 2, making it more powerful than ever,” YouTube said in a February blog post. “And we’re also now launching a new capability powered by Veo 2: generating standalone video clips that you can add to any of your Shorts. Need a specific scene but don’t have the right footage? Want to turn your imagination into reality and tell a unique story? Simply use a text prompt to generate a video clip that fits perfectly into your narrative, or create a whole new world of content. It’s that easy!”
YouTube’s continual rise in short-form content highlights its larger takeover of the media landscape as it has become one of the most valuable entertainment sources in the world through its multiple streams.
Read Next: YouTube’s Latest Upgrade Puts AI-Generated Videos into Shorts
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