Why ads on YouTube Shorts are a big problem for TikTok.
YouTube Shorts will soon have ads. Google and YouTube’s parent company, Alphabet, announced this at their live marketing event in May. But what does this mean for the highly competitive short-form content sector? And how will this affect your brand?
One thing is certain: YouTube is not backing out of a fight with TikTok. It would be inappropriate not to call TikTok a giant in the Shorts space. With over one billion active users, TikTok has revolutionized the way social media users view entertainment.
A consequence of the incredible success is the cutthroat competition it creates. And signals are not looking like YouTube will back down anytime soon.
Google Ads Vice President and General Manager, Jerry Dischler, recently stated that:
“The ads roll out is an exciting milestone for advertisers and also a key step in the company’s road to developing a long-term YouTube Shorts monetization solution for creators.”
Until recently, Short creators’ monetization came from the so-called “Shorts-fund”. A 100 million dollar fund designed to monetize creators based on views, user engagement, and original content. YouTube, however, recognized this type of monetization is not a sustainable way to pay out creators and started looking for other solutions.
Experiments with advertisements had already started last year, with the last experiments finishing in February this year. The advertisements will show up in the Shorts feed and will not have a different format than the typical content. Advertisements will, just like TikTok, have options for businesses to connect their product to make it easier for the customers to shop without the need to switch to a browser.
But how does this affect your brand? In a previous blog, we talked about how using YouTube Shorts could be an extremely effective way to create impressions and share your brand. With the implementation of ads, you can not only promote your shorts, but your brand will also be able to qualify for monetization. In addition to this, advertisements will indirectly attract a bigger audience to Shorts since it attracts creators to create more and better content.
Advertisements bring plenty of possibilities to YouTube Shorts. Not only will the ads create scalability and monetization, but it attracts the attention of big companies looking to inject a large sum of money into the platform which benefits both creators and consumers alike.