As TikTok teeters on the edge of a U.S. ban, YouTube says that its TikTok competitor, YouTube Shorts, is an even better idea for creators. Its short-form video platform now averages over 70 billion daily views and over 25% of channels in the YouTube Partner Program monetize their videos on Shorts.

The news comes hot on the heels of an announcement last week by TikTok in which the ByteDance-owned short video app declared that its revamped creator fund had upped total revenue by more than 250% in the last six months. TikTok's year-old fund, which replaced TikTok's $1 billion Creator Fund, is now exiting beta.

As part of its expansions to the YouTube Partner Program, YouTube began monetizing options for Shorts creators in September 2022. While YouTubers who make long-form videos had previously needed 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in order to qualify for revenue-sharing, as early as 2023, Shorts creators can meet a new threshold of 1,000 subscribers and 10 million Shorts views over 90 days. And only need 1,000 subscribers and 10 million Shorts views over 90 days for creators to earn the revenue from 45% of the ad revenue on their short videos.

The company also notes that that program is already one year old. What's more, YouTube further states that most of the creators in its partner program for Shorts also monetize in other ways, too. That's because more than 80% of YPP creators generating revenue through Shorts also generate from long-form advertising, fan funding, YouTube Premium, BrandConnects, Shopping, and many other forms. This means that creating for Shorts is not a self-contained activity for most creators but rather just one part of their overall businesses.

But overall, YouTube claims that its 16-year-old YPP today counts more than 3 million creators worldwide and has paid out more than $70 billion to creators, artists and media companies during the past three years. That is bigger than "any other creator monetization platform," YouTube observes, in a dig that appears pointedly at TikTok.