Echoing TikTok's gifting, YouTube is rolling out “jewels” that users can buy to support creators during livestreams, for those in the YouTube Partner Program
YouTube is taking a page out of the TikTok playbook by adding “jewels” you buy to exchange for gifts for your favorite creators during livestreams.
Context & Ripple Effects
YouTube has steadily expanded ways for viewers to financially support creators, from Super Stickers and paid membership tiers to gifted channel memberships. “Jewels” extends that monetization toolkit specifically around live interaction.
The company has also tied creator revenue to commerce through livestream shopping tests and later Shopify-linked features. The new virtual-gifting mechanism adds a direct audience-payment option rather than a product-sale transaction.
First-order effects
- YouTube Partner Program creators gain a new livestream revenue channel: viewers can buy jewels and convert them into creator gifts.
- Viewers who want to signal support in real time receive a purchase flow modeled on virtual gifting rather than memberships, chat stickers, or merchandise.
Second-order effects
- Creators and livestream teams will have another reason to optimize live formats and audience participation, while YouTube must position jewels alongside its existing paid support features.
- TikTok’s established gifting model becomes a more direct competitive benchmark for live-creator monetization, increasing pressure on platforms to offer comparable fan-payment tools.
Third-order effects
- If virtual gifting becomes a meaningful revenue source, creator-platform competition will increasingly center on the completeness of each platform’s monetization stack—recurring memberships, commerce, and real-time fan spending.
- The feature points toward livestreams functioning less as a promotional format and more as a transactional venue, though uptake will depend on whether viewers adopt another paid currency and creators can make it worthwhile.
The trend: Major video platforms are converging on layered creator monetization, with virtual currencies turning live audience engagement into direct spending.