Reels Creators Angered Over Meta Revenue Share Payments Error

Meta’s facing recent backlash from short-form video creators after its latest payment notifications for its Music Revenue Sharing program, which enables video creators to earn a share of in-stream ad revenue from their Reels on Facebook that contain licensed music, informed them of big pending payout amounts, in error, which Meta has since been forced to correct.

As reported by Fortune, some Facebook creators were notified that they’d be receiving tens of hundreds of dollars from this system, which was based on a glitch in Meta’s system.

Meta has since sent out a notification clarifying the error, and reducing those payouts significantly.

Meta launched its initial Music Revenue Share program, in July last 12 months, but only recently expanded to program to Reels as well. As such, many creators had no precedent for what they could have the ability to earn via Reels clips, which has led to broader confusion across the initial payment notifications.

Meta says that the difficulty only impacted a small variety of creators, and that every one have now been notified of the error.

As social platforms battle to supply the perfect incentives for top creators, most are still ironing out their recent payment structures, which is especially applicable within the case of short-form video, where monetization is just not as straightforward as longer content.

With most short clips being only 30 seconds in length, you possibly can’t just chuck in pre- and mid-roll ads, which complicates performance attribution. With longer videos, you possibly can definitively say that the variety of viewers that saw the ad is attributable to that creator, but short form has forced a re-think of video monetization processes, with a view to facilitate equitable and reliable income.

And no platform has perfected it just yet.

Snapchat has suffered from creator backlash over its flawed Highlight payments model, which has seen creator payment amounts fluctuate, while YouTube’s recent Shorts monetization program has delivered underwhelming results for a lot of. TikTok doesn’t even have revenue share process, and as with Snapchat, creator funds simply aren’t sustainable, nor equitable on balance.

Meta’s payment issue is less related to an incorrect system, as such, however it does highlight the challenges that apps are facing in monetizing shorter video content. That’s especially problematic given the large engagement increases that short-form content has driven on virtually every app, and as such, all of them want more exclusive short clips.

But no platform has separated itself as the perfect place to post to earn money from short-form as yet.

Meta’s misstep could also hurt its prospects on this front, with that initial creator angst potentially leaving a sour taste in people’s mouths.

Meta will now need to work to win back their trust, and with various other options on the market, that could possibly be a more significant blow than it’d initially seem.