Sources: seeking to boost Reels' quality, Meta executives are leaning toward relaxing the company's long-standing opposition to sharing ad revenue with creators
Sylvia Varnham O'Regan / The Information :
Context & Ripple Effects
Meta has long paid Reels creators through fixed, view-count-based bonuses — the Reels Play program launched in 2021 promised up to $35K a month — while refusing the ad-revenue splits used elsewhere. That stance sat alongside other payout retrenchment: sources reported in May 2022 that Meta was weighing cutting what it pays news outlets and shifting news consumption toward short video rather than article links.
The reversal under consideration lands amid commercial pressure: after Meta's first-ever ad sales decline, it began offering advertisers sweeteners including a 25% discount on Reels ads. Paying creators a slice of that ad revenue would tie the money Meta spends on content directly to the inventory it sells.
First-order effects
- Creators who today earn through capped, view-count bonuses would instead take a percentage of the ad revenue their Reels generate, making top performers' pay scale with actual monetization rather than a fixed monthly promise.
- Meta's creator costs flip from guaranteed outlays to a variable share of ad income, aligning spend with the Reels ad inventory it has been discounting to win advertisers back.
Second-order effects
- Advertisers get a stronger pitch: if higher-quality Reels lift engagement, the 25% discount becomes an entry offer into inventory worth full price, easing the pressure behind the ad-sales slump.
- A shift away from fixed bonuses forces every rival short-video platform's incentive math into the open — creators can now compare revenue shares, not monthly caps, when deciding where to post.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Meta's creator economics converge on one principle: payouts follow ad value — extending the same logic that reduced news licensing payments in favor of keeping audiences inside short video.
- Industry-wide, fixed creator funds give way to revenue-sharing as the default contract between platforms and video creators, with each platform's split percentage becoming the key competitive number.
The trend: Platform creator compensation is moving from fixed view-count bonuses toward ad-revenue sharing, with Meta's Reels decision marking its reluctant entry into the model.