Membership Bonus Program, Thumbnail Updates, and AI Dubbing on the Horizon!

Transcript

This week’s YouTube updates start with the Memberships bonus program. This is a real thing, not a scam, and it’s offered directly through YouTube Studio. It’s an offer from YouTube/Google to creators who are already in the Partner Program but haven’t enabled Channel Memberships yet. There are two tiers depending on channel size. YouTube/Google is offering a one-time bonus to activate Channel Memberships, plus an additional bonus for the first 100 members acquired through it. The bonuses are divided into two tiers: larger channels get slightly more money, smaller channels get slightly less. Specifically, that’s €500 for activating Channel Memberships and then €5 per membership up to an additional €500, totaling €1000. For larger channels, it’s €1000 for activation and then €10 per membership up to an additional €1000, totaling €2000. I think this is a good thing. Channel Memberships are a great opportunity for creators—unlike other platforms like Twitch where there’s a 50/50 split, on YouTube the creator gets 70% and the platform gets 30%.

If you’d like to support us, we also offer Channel Memberships. It of course helps us produce this format. Moving on to Shorts: Frame select and edit. About the first 20% of creators have already gained access to this feature. Currently, it’s only available on mobile, but a desktop launch is planned soon. This means that when you go to your Shorts in YouTube Studio and edit them, you can customize the thumbnail, add text, choose small filters, etc. I think this is a very good feature. The rollout is planned for about 3 weeks; there’s no fixed date, but in the coming weeks you should update your YouTube Studio app to possibly edit your Shorts’ thumbnails.

Next, regular thumbnails are getting a size update. Previously, there was a standard size limit of 2MB that couldn’t be exceeded. Now it’s being increased to 10MB—I have a date here but it’s not confirmed yet. I think this makes a lot of sense, especially since we don’t just create our thumbnails in 720p anymore, but maybe also in 1080p or higher, and use other formats with better quality like PNG instead of JPEG. Additionally, we’ve requested from the YouTube Studio team to support the webp format. They’re still discussing it; there’s no news yet on if or when it will come.

Lastly, I saw on Twitter that some people already have access to AI Dubbing, although it’s supposed to be announced later this year at the Made on YouTube Event. Of course, this goes hand in hand with Multilanguage Audio and the Allowed Program, which we’ve been talking about for years. The rollout is planned for later this year, but we don’t know how extensive it will be—whether it will be available to everyone or just 20% or 50% initially. We’ll see. I think this could be a very interesting story for all of us, especially for the German market which can then also expand into the English market.

Those were this week’s YouTube updates. If you missed last Thursday’s Q&A stream, feel free to check it out. It was announced spontaneously, which I know is my problem. Next time, you’ll be back! Maybe you can already start collecting questions under this video so I can prepare. Thanks for tuning in and see you next week for more updates! Take care!