Turn views into income

With YouTube Premium, members can enjoy watching YouTube ad-free. If you accept the relevant contract modules, the paid membership fee from YouTube Premium members can give you a new source of revenue. To earn YouTube Premium revenue for:

• Long-form videos: Accept the Watch Page Monetisation Module and turn on ads during upload
• Shorts: Accept the Shorts Feed Monetisation Module

YouTube Premium members can also download your videos to watch offline on mobile and play them in the background – helping you to get more watch time.

Revenue from YouTube Premium membership fees is distributed to video creators based on how much members watch your content.

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When you turn on monetization for your channel, you can choose to share in revenue from ads being served on the Watch Page or in the Shorts Feed. Ads are served through the ad auction, Google Ad Manager, and other YouTube-sold sources. Once you turn on monetization, it may take some time for ads to show up.

The ads on your video are automatically chosen based on context like your video metadata and whether the content is advertiser-friendly.

We regularly monitor and update our systems to deliver the most relevant ads to your videos. However, we don't manually control every ad that shows with your videos, so we can't guarantee that we’ll play specific ads.

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On monetized videos that are 8 minutes or longer, you can turn on ads during the middle of the video (known as "mid-rolls").

You can manage mid-rolls on any video regardless of your channel-level upload default. If eligible, you can also enable mid-roll ads for your live streams.

You can change the upload default settings for your channel in YouTube Studio to feature mid-roll ad breaks for future uploads.

1. Sign in to YouTube Studio from your computer.
2. Click Settings.
3. Select Upload defaults.
4. Proceed to select Monetization.
5. Under Ad preferences, check the box next to Show mid-roll ads during my videos.
6. Click Save.

You have now enabled mid-rolls as a channel-level default.

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If you’re in the YouTube Partner Program and want to make money through ads, your content needs to follow our advertiser-friendly content guidelines.

Advertisers come to YouTube to connect with potential customers, and it’s important to them that their ads only show against content that aligns with their brand. That’s why we have advertiser-friendly content guidelines, to help ensure that YouTube remains a safe place for brands to reach their target audiences—which in turn helps creators earn more money.

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Revenue is shared on ads that are viewed between videos in the Shorts Feed. Shorts views exclusively receive ad revenue sharing from the Shorts Feed, which is separate from long-form video monetization on the Watch Page.

There are four steps to how Shorts ad revenue sharing works:

1. Pool Shorts Feed ad revenue. Each month, revenue from ads running between videos in the Shorts Feed gets added together and used to both reward creators and help cover costs of music licensing.

2. Calculate the Creator Pool. Shorts Feed ad revenue is then allocated into the Creator Pool based on engaged views and music usage across Shorts uploaded by monetizing creators.

   • If a monetizing creator uploads a Short without any music, all of the revenue associated with it goes into the Creator Pool.
   • If a monetizing creator uploads a Short with music in it, then YouTube will split the revenue associated with its views between the Creator Pool and music partners based on the number of tracks used.
3. Allocate the Creator Pool. From the overall amount in the Creator Pool, revenue is distributed to monetizing creators based on their share of total engaged views from monetizing creators’ Shorts in each country. For example, if a creator gets 5% of all eligible engaged Shorts views uploaded by monetizing creators, they’ll be allocated 5% of the revenue in the Creator Pool.
4. Apply revenue share. Monetizing creators will keep 45% of their allocated revenue, regardless if music was used or not.

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You’ll only see limited or no ad earnings on a video if you’re a part of the YouTube Partner Program.

This means that you’ve turned on monetization for a video, but our automated systems or policy specialists believe that video does not meet our advertiser-friendly content guidelines.

You may earn less revenue on this content (because fewer ads are likely to appear) compared to content that’s suitable for all advertisers.

In some cases, you may be able to appeal this decision. If you’re not sure, check your content against the examples cited in our advertiser-friendly content guidelines. If you still think it shouldn’t fall in the “limited or no ads” status, you can request a human review.