YouTube Shorts surpasses five trillion total views in less than two years

YouTube CEO reveals a new milestone for Shorts and new ways to help creators monetize their videos.

What you need to know

• YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has revealed that Shorts creators have amassed a total of five trillion views.
• She also unveiled new ways to help creators make money with Shorts beyond the $100 million fund announced last year.
• The service is testing the integration of shopping features with Shorts.

YouTube Shorts made its debut only a year and a half ago, but creators using the TikTok-style feature have already amassed over five trillion views across multiple platforms, including Android phones and laptops, thanks to the growing craze over short-form videos.

Susan Wojcicki, YouTube CEO, unveiled the new milestone for Shorts in a blog post published on Tuesday. She also revealed YouTube's $100 million fund for Shorts creators, announced last year, is now available in more than 100 countries. In August of last year, YouTube began paying creators between $100 and $10,000 per month based on viewership and engagement.

It appears that most of the fund's beneficiaries are small creators. Wojcicki said that more than 40% of creators who received payment last year came from a different type of creators who weren't eligible to be part of the YouTube Partner Program.

This year, the Google-owned video sharing service plans to explore new methods to help creators make money with their bite-sized content. Wojcicki said YouTube will help Shorts creators build sponsored content by matching them with certain brands through a program called BrandConnect.

YouTube is also looking to incorporate shopping features into Shorts, banking on its existing program that allows viewers to browse and shop featured products that appear alongside videos. Additionally, the service will expand its remix feature that allows you to create Shorts using audio from YouTube videos, assuming it's available for anyone to copy.

Beyond those methods, YouTube is eyeing an expansion to its monetization options for creators, including the use of nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Later this year, it also plans to roll out gifted memberships.