YouTube is raising the requirements for creators to qualify for its main advertising revenue-sharing program, doubling the watch-time and Shorts-view thresholds and making it harder for smaller or less consistent creators to earn money from the platform.
The changes, announced Monday, are expected to take effect on February 1 and will primarily affect creators seeking to enter the advertising tier of the YouTube Partner Program, or YPP.
Creators already enrolled in the program will not be removed because of the new entry requirements.
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“The biggest changes are on what it takes to earn from ads rev-share,” Amjad Hanif, YouTube’s vice president of creator product, said in a video outlining the changes.
For creators focused on conventional long-form videos, the amount of qualified watch time required over the previous 12 months will rise to 8,000 hours from 4,000. The subscriber requirement will remain at 1,000.
The increase means a creator will need to generate twice as much eligible viewing activity before qualifying for YouTube’s advertising revenue-sharing program. For creators who are still building an audience, that could significantly extend the time required to reach monetization.
The threshold is even more demanding for creators focused on YouTube Shorts.
Creators seeking to participate in Shorts advertising revenue sharing will need 20 million qualified Shorts views within a 90-day period, up from 10 million. They will also continue to need at least 1,000 subscribers.
More importantly, Shorts creators will have to maintain 10 million qualified views during each rolling 90-day period to continue earning through the Shorts program. A creator who falls below that level can lose access to Shorts monetization, although YouTube said the creator could still earn revenue from eligible long-form videos.
The change effectively shifts YouTube’s Shorts monetization model toward sustained performance rather than occasional viral success.
A creator who produces one video that attracts millions of views may no longer be able to rely on that spike alone. To remain eligible, creators will need to consistently generate substantial viewership over successive 90-day periods.
“We had a case where if you had only a few thousand views, you might have a few cents for that month,” Hanif said. “Instead, we’d like to design the program in a way where it rewards creators who are leaned in, who are driving views and engagement.”
That could make YouTube’s monetization system more attractive to established creators while increasing the pressure on smaller channels to publish consistently and maintain audience engagement.
The policy also underpins how dramatically YouTube’s creator economy has changed since the company last increased the long-form monetization threshold in 2018. YouTube now has about 3 million creators participating in its Partner Program. The platform has also had to adapt to the rapid growth of short-form video, a market transformed by TikTok and increasingly contested by Instagram Reels and other services.
YouTube introduced permanent revenue sharing for Shorts in 2023, giving creators a direct financial incentive to build audiences around short-form content. The format has since become a major component of the platform’s creator strategy. But Shorts also produce much more volatile viewing patterns than conventional videos. A creator can receive millions of views from a single viral clip and then see engagement collapse soon afterward.
YouTube’s decision to impose an ongoing performance requirement appears designed to address that volatility and direct monetization toward creators who can repeatedly generate meaningful engagement.
The higher thresholds could nevertheless create a tougher environment for smaller creators.
Austen Tosone, a creator who spoke to Business Insider, said the changes could make it “so much tougher for small creators,” noting that many creators already struggle to monetize long-form content.
YouTube’s approach to creator economics has broadly changed. The company said it is expanding monetization beyond traditional advertising revenue, introducing initiatives such as milestone-based incentive payments, shopping bonuses and additional earnings opportunities tied to creators starting and growing trends.
YouTube said it wants to diversify the ways creators make money rather than relying solely on advertising. That strategy is important because advertising revenue can be unpredictable, particularly for smaller channels. Expanding shopping, incentives, and other commercial tools could give YouTube more ways to retain creators even as it raises the bar for entry into ad revenue sharing.
With millions of creators already participating in YPP, a higher threshold allows the company to concentrate advertising revenue and other resources among channels that demonstrate sustained audience demand.
The new rules do not prevent creators from uploading videos or building audiences. They make the path from audience-building to advertising revenue longer and, particularly for Shorts creators, more dependent on sustained performance.