YouTube says YouTube Kids app now has 35M weekly active users and launches new tools for creators to make money from their fans, including an applause feature
- Company says feature called Shorts still in testing stage — Google unit also introduces new revenue tools for creators
Context & Ripple Effects
This announcement extends a playbook YouTube has run since its 2018 wave of monetization tools and sponsorship expansion, which came amid backlash from smaller creators shut out of ad revenue. The applause feature pushes further in that direction: income that flows directly from fans rather than through the ad pool.
The other half of the story is Shorts, still described as being in testing here. That status is the setup for what follows in the coverage: Shorts graduating into an ad-supported surface and then a revenue-sharing one.
First-order effects
- Creators gain a direct fan-payment channel via applause, supplementing ad share with tips — immediately useful to the smaller creators whose exclusion drove the 2018 backlash.
- Google now has a disclosed engagement figure for YouTube Kids — 35M weekly active users — giving advertisers and internal planners a measurable family-audience surface alongside the main app.
Second-order effects
- Fan-funded tools reduce creators' dependence on the Partner Program threshold, which matters as YouTube later formalizes Shorts monetization with a 45% ad-revenue split for qualifying creators — the two layers together widen who can earn on the platform.
- Once Shorts exits testing, it becomes a monetizable inventory surface: YouTube's subsequent move to test ads on Shorts as overall ad growth slows shows why building the audience first, then layering revenue, was the sequence.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, creator platforms compete on stacked revenue — ads, fan payments, commerce, licensed music — rather than a single ad split, shifting bargaining power toward platforms that own every layer of the creator's income stack.
- A measured kids audience of this size points toward children's content becoming a separately tracked, separately monetized segment within big-video platforms rather than an appendix to the main app.
The trend: YouTube is converting raw audience surfaces — Kids, Shorts — into layered creator-economy assets, moving from ad-share dependence toward a portfolio of fan-funded, ad, and commerce revenue.