MUMBAI: Social media giant YouTube is focusing on new monetising opportunities for its top creators in addition to ad revenue. YouTube is rolling out new options for channel memberships, custom stickers that users can pay to make appear in video chats, and several new merchandising partners.
YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan spoke on the updates in a keynote on Thursday at VidCon US. Mohan also said that while creator revenue from Super Chat, Channel Memberships and Merch was not significant in 2018, now several thousand channels have more than doubled their total YouTube revenue from those tools.
The Super Stickers will be launched in the next few months and fans will be able to purchase those during live streams and premieres in order to show creators how much they like their content. This feature is meant to compliment the existing monetisation tool Super Chat.
The social media giant is also introducing changes to membership levels allowing creators to set up five different price points for memberships. YouTube is also expanding Merch Shelf feature which was launched last year.