Google confirms 50 billion views for YouTube Shorts videos

It would seem that opening up the option to monetize YouTube Shorts clips has motivated content creators, who still can’t find similar options for profit on rival platform TikTok.

Launched in 2021 as a rather makeshift response to the newly emerged star, TikTok, the YouTube Shorts platform emerged as a heavily promoted sub-category to the existing collective of YouTube users. For a while, Google’s attempt seemed like it would fail, with the company even accepting some concessions to the growing group of YouTube users who expressed disapproval of the company’s attempted direction.

By comparison, a year ago YouTube Shorts views barely reached 30 billion, the reported increase coming as an unlikely positive note in a not exactly encouraging revenue forecast. For example, overall revenue reported for the entire YouTube platform barely reached $8 billion, down from $8.6 billion reported the year before.

Unfortunately for Google, enabling the option to monetize YouTube Shorts productions provides only temporary motivation for creators who still don’t find monetization options as readily available on TikTok. Thus, it’s easy to anticipate that a similar announcement from ByteDance could tip the scales in the other direction, at least as long as the Android developer doesn’t receive additional help from US authorities, who are inching closer to a blanket ban of the app suspected of ties to the communist regime in Beijing.