
On TikTok at least, where there is no ad revenue sharing, ads are shown between short videos - so, since the ad isn’t playing directly on a video like on YouTube, how would you know who gets the revenue share? The creator whose video appeared before or after the ad? The nature of the short-form video feed makes it complicated to give creators a cut of ad revenue, which of course means the creator gets the short end of the stick. Ad revenue share is a clear next way for Snap to increase its revenue and creator payouts alike, but in the TikTok-like video feed format, it’s tricky to determine who gets the cut of the ad revenue. Through Spotlight alone, Snapchat paid out $250 million last year among 12,000 creators. “So I think this is going to be another great way that we can really serve creators and continue to deepen the content experience on Snapchat.” “We’ve actually really exciting sort of phenomenon take off on Snapchat where creators are using Spotlight and posting videos to Spotlight to try to get more distribution and attract more subscribers to their story,” Spiegel said on the earnings call.

In December, Snapchat also introduced mid-roll ads in select creators’ stories, offering the creator the ability to earn revenue share from the ads. Though Spiegel hedged that this testing is limited, it affirms that short-form video is, of course, one of the ways the company is trying to boost its revenue. At Snap’s quarterly earnings call yesterday, CEO Evan Spiegel revealed that Snapchat is testing ads on Spotlight, its TikTok competitor.
