YouTube to bring NFTs to platform in 2022

YouTube has given its official draft of plans for 2022, in terms of the kind of features that it plans to add to the platform through the year. A key part of these plans revolves around YouTube Shorts – the short videos subsection of the platform that has gone after TikTok’s supremacy. Neal Mohan, chief product officer (CPO) at YouTube, also touched upon how the platform may integrate non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as a new monetisation tool for creators.

Stating that NFTs and blockchain-based technologies can help creators and viewers to build “deeper relationships,” Mohan said. He further added, “Giving a verifiable way for fans to own unique videos, photos, art, and even experiences from their favourite creators could be a compelling prospect for creators and their audience.”

Mohan’s post backs the one made by YouTube chief executive (CEO), Susan Wojcicki, on January 25 – where she spoke about the video platform looking to integrate NFTs as a way for creators to further monetise their content. Earlier this month, in its earnings call, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai also said that YouTube is exploring new monetisation avenues for its creator base – including NFTs.

Interestingly, Pichai had also mentioned that the company is considering India as the first market to experiment new monetisation features in, before expanding them to other markets. This, though, does not clarify if YouTube would bring its NFT integration to India first as well.

Influencer marketing firms in India are also actively looking at NFTs as a new way for content creators to monetise their work. Shudeep Majumdar, CEO of influencer marketing company Zefmo, told Mint earlier this month that companies in this sector are looking to offer an intermediate NFT platform for brands and creators to collaborate through. Toshendra Sharma, CEO of white-label NFT marketplace provider NFTically, backed Majumdar’s claim – stating that most of the major influencer marketing companies in India are exploring this avenue.

Mohan also focused on YouTube Shorts as a key feature that would expand through 2022. He said, “YouTube Shorts have now enjoyed over 5 trillion all-time views. Over 40 percent of creators who got paid from the YouTube Shorts Fund last year weren’t previously monetizing their content on YouTube. In the coming months, we’ll start to test other ways to make money on Shorts — such as exploring new ways for creators to build branded content, integrating fan-funded features like Super Chat into Shorts, and more.”

Born as a result of the viral short video economy largely brought to mainstream by TikTok, digital marketers have said that YouTube Shorts has largely managed to capitalise on YouTube’s dominance as a video publishing platform – something that Facebook and its fellow platforms have not quite succeeded at. Shalvi Mangaokar, co-founder of digital marketing firm The Mill, told Mint earlier this month that while YouTube has managed to rope in creators with Shorts, Facebook failed to catch on – a factor that led to Meta declaring underwhelming financial forecasts for the coming quarter.

It is this that Mohan says YouTube wants to capitalise on, by allowing creators to further monetise their content – thereby drawing more eyeballs to its short videos section. Among other features for 2022, Mohan stated that YouTube will soon allow content creators to set their own channel guidelines, allow viewers to sort video comments by time stamps, and also offer creators a range of new data and insights on videos to break down topic-wise video consumption statistics.