Average daily views for the video format YouTube Shorts grew by more than 130% year-on-year in Southeast Asia as of July 2023, says Niharika Kapoor, Asia-Pacific lead for Shorts scaled partnerships.
YouTube Shorts are 60 seconds or less in length, and the format is bringing new creators into its global YouTube Partner Program (YPP), in a bid to compete with the fast-rising TikTok.
Ms Kapoor said average daily log-in viewers of YouTube Shorts grew by more than 35% year-over-year in Southeast Asia.
In Thailand, Ms Kapoor said content growth has been tremendous on YouTube Shorts, spanning lifestyle, travel, food, tech, beauty, and arts and craft.
The YouTube Shorts video format, which hit the market in 2021, now has an average of over 70 billion daily views worldwide and has opened up new avenues for content creators to earn money.
"16 years ago, YouTube made a decision to share revenue with creators, and starting from a handful of creators then, we now have 3 million channels under YouTube," said Thomas Kim, product director for YPP.
Over the last three years, YouTube has paid out more than US$70 billion to creators, artists and media partners in the YPP programme, he said.
Todd Sherman, product lead for YouTube Shorts, said that last year YouTube Shorts allowed shorts creators with 1,000 subscribers and 10 million shorts views in the last 90 days to join the YouTube Partner programme and launched revenue sharing on shorts ads.
"This is really important because we want to support creator choice. If a creator only wants to do Shorts, they can do that and earn. If a creator wants to do different formats they can earn as well," said Mr Sherman.
Since introducing revenue sharing on Shorts last year, more than 25% of channels in the YouTube Partner programme are now earning through this revenue stream.
"Shorts is continuing to grow. It's really a thriving community of creators and viewers are continuing to engage deeply with Shorts," said Mr Sherman.
YouTube Shorts recently introduced live streaming. This enables creators to go live from their mobile phones and also be discovered in the Shorts feed. This makes it easier to connect with new audiences and also build a community by interacting with people in the chat.